On a day when the book industry appears to be imploding before our eyes, I’m happy to post this fantastic animated film, which was made to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the British HarperCollins imprint 4th Estate. The film was produced by the London-based design studio Apt, which has been doing lots of terrific work recently.

There’s some behind-the-scenes footage here.

[via Andrew Sullivan.]

I wrote a post last year about my father’s professional chess career in the ’50s and ’60s and his connection to Bobby Fischer. At the end of that post, I mentioned that he’s spent many years working on a big, definitive book about blindfold chess—the art of playing without sight of the board or the pieces. It’s an extraordinary intellectual feat that has a long, colorful history, and it’s deeply related to my father’s other main lifelong interest, psychology. (He retired from Indiana University in the mid-’90s after many years as a distinguished professor of psychology.) The book, which my father wrote with a co-author, John Knott, is now in the final stages of publication, and it should be out by the end of the year. I’ve designed a teaser site, blindfoldchess.net, that features a summary of the book and links where you can preorder a copy. I pushed the site live yesterday. Check it out.

When the book comes out, I’ll be posting an in-depth Q&A with my father about the rich intellectual and psychological history of this amazing skill.

Here’s a reprint of the book summary from the site:

[Continue reading "New Teaser Site for My Father’s Upcoming Book About Blindfold Chess"...]

Or so it might seem. One doesn’t have to have one’s mind completely in the gutter to think that maybe, just maybe, this image was an unfortunate choice for the cover of a children’s book:

[spotted here via here.]

Out soon from Harry N. Abrams, Inc.:

From the book description: “Body Type is an eye-opening look into the amazingly creative ways that tattoo artists are utilizing typography. Whereas the majority of tattoo art uses images to convey messages, here the message actually is the image.”

Via BibliOdyssey, which is bursting with gorgeous graphical stuff, I just discovered Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie, an admirably geeky blog devoted to the history of the bookplate. As the American Society of Bookplate Collectors and Designers explains,

Since the fifteenth century, distinguished artists and their patrons have given serious attention to this art form. It represents a miniature art developed to adorn books and a convenient, individualized way for the book’s owner to be identified. The bookplate, or ex libris, is a label placed on the inside of the front cover of a book.

These celebrity bookplates are apparently from the blogger’s personal collection:

Go here for more of this blogger’s celebrity bookplates.

The website of the Los Angeles-based ReadInk Books contains a bunch of other Hollywood bookplates, along with some historical background about each.

Next Monday, October 10, the nice people at Bookforum are hosting a Katrina benefit at Cooper Union’s Great Hall. The event will be hosted by Chris Rose of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and participants will include Donna Tartt, Robert Stone, and Roy Blount Jr. Proceeds will go to the Acadiana Arts Council to benefit “artists, writers, and musicians affected by Hurricane Katrina.” More details here.