TTT: An Ode to Jessica Hische’s Book Covers

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

The prompt for today was to talk about book covers that either were solely composed of type or used mainly typographic elements. I cannot think of many designers that design more beautiful covers than Jessica Hische.

Jessica Hische, Penguin Drop Cap Series

Hische is a letterer, author, and a Brooklyn transplant to the Bay area. I think I probably discovered her work in/around 2010 when she was working on her popular Daily Drop Cap series as a way to keep motivated and keep designing between freelance gigs. Everyday (or at least regularly), she’d publish a different letter in a different style. I think all told there were 12 complete alphabets between 2009-2011, as well as a guest illustrated series.

Buttermilk font: https://jessicahische.is/makingherfirstfont

Within months, it was being talked about all across the far reaches of the internet. I encountered her while I was just starting to dip my toe in the calligraphy waters and looking for alphabet inspiration. I found, and still find, her forms to be so beautiful. Somehow even the ones that are supposed to be kind of creepy and gothic are still approachable, full of gorgeous curves. The fonts on her site that you can buy have names like Buttermilk and Brioche, words calculated to show off her ascenders, show off the forms of the letters, but also words which covey mood and tone. Everything looked different, but still had undeniable style. And the fact that the style was fun, often bubbly, and vintage inspired makes everything she does feel like a glass of champagne–worth toasting.

“If you feel like you know Jessica Hische a bit from her output, you might not be all that off-base, and you certainly wouldn’t be alone. It’s been written that her work has “personality,” but it might be more accurate to say that her work has presence—her presence. In my experience, what you see is really what you get.”

Zachary Petit, Design Matters Media Editor-in-Chief
“After working with Dave Eggers on Hologram for the King I was pumped to be brought on board to design his new book, The Circle. It was especially fun to design this cover, as I’ve spent the last two years living in San Francisco surrounded by the tech industry (my husband works for Facebook) and the story is set in an influential social media company. I also had to design a logo for the fictitious company, The Circle, and was inspired by the interweaving connectivity of social media sites and also knots that once tight are difficult to untie.” – Hische, for Knopf https://jessicahische.is/joiningthecircle

Even though I was primarily doing calligraphy, I found a lot more of my inspiration looking to lettering artists than calligraphers in particular. Calligraphers often had absolutely spellbinding mastery of the technique and medium, but they were largely working in older, established styles, and I wanted to work in more of the tone and mood that other letterers use.

See more of her work here: https://jessicahische.is/working

Now she’s gotten much, much more recognition, such as being named in Forbes’ 30 under 30 list in design, she’s become a children’s book author in her own right, and she’s worked with some of the biggest names you can work with across a huge spectrum of industries.

Hische for Barnes & Noble

Besides doing the design work for her own books, she’s also designed the drop cap series of Penguin classics, worked on the probably familiar range of classics for Barnes & Noble, and has designed work for numerous other books.

Book covers are somewhat unique in design industries, I think, because the artist’s name actually goes on the book. While most design products don’t give their designers credit, book covers do. I’m sure that must be an attractive aspect of doing lettering work–because if someone likes the cover of a book they know exactly who to commission. And it adds an element of pressure because if you don’t capture the book, well…. your name lives on it forever. But I don’t think Hische really needs to worry about that.

Hische designed the cover and did the original embroidery for this guidebook from The Little Bookroom. https://jessicahische.is/embroideringabookcover

“reading the book I’m doing the cover for gives me more conceptual and visual inspiration than spending a day in a rare books library”

Jessica Hische, in an interview with The Everygirl
Hische for Barnes & Noble, my photograph

Taking just her cover for Oscar Wilde into consideration, we can see some of the direct inspiration for the text. Everything is beautiful, but it still has hard, even sharp edges (the little triangles on the capitals as well the serifs) while still staying true to the Victorian aesthetic the book cultivates and critiques. The paisley flourishes call to mind peacock tails (and their associations with beauty and vanity). Also, while all the covers feature some kind of border, this cover is one of the only in the series that can be said to have a frame.

Even though I haven’t touched a calligraphy pen for a while now, I still find lettering and typography to be intensely interesting. It’s just another way to make you feel something when you look at a word or a phrase and I’m fascinated by how forms and art influence our perception of words and things more generally. And seeing how lettering can bring books to life is so inspiring to me. I encourage you to seek out Jessica Hische’s work–there’s so much more than I could possibly show here and I love how they all take direct inspiration from the books themselves.

Do you have a favorite typographic cover? Let me know in the comments.

A Friend’s Reading Challenge: 10 Books in a Week

One of my best friends is an avid reader and often reads voraciously in a very short period. She took a few days off of work with the goal to read 10 books. This sounded like fun, so I thought I’d join her in trying to read 10 books before my classes started a few weeks ago. Well, I failed the challenge by only making it to 9 books. But that’s still enough to merit a blog post, so onward!

Stats:

  • Books read: 9
  • Fiction: 7
  • Nonfiction: 2
  • Genres: Historical fiction, fantasy, biography, classic, contemporary fiction, literary fiction, memoir, romance
  • Total number of pages: 2,889
  • Audiobooks: 3
  • Ebooks: 1
  • Actual books: 4

Here are the books I read for this challenge, in the order I read them.

  1. The Good Lord Bird by James McBride I love historical fiction that encounters important people and events almost by happenstance, and that’s what happens when young Henry is freed from slavery to (forcibly) join John Brown’s fight for abolition. As a girl. Along the way he meets Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. The book is irreverent, and its satire is complex. But it is often moving and hopeful as it deals with powerful themes of identity, faith, survival, and race.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

2. The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly When fantasy novels feature young protagonists, that often means that they’re using the fantasy world to process some kind of trauma that they’re experiencing in real life. That’s definitely what happens here as David mourns his mother and finds another world that is even darker than he could have imagined. This book sort of reminded me of a cross between Labyrinth and Narnia. I wish the book hadn’t been quite so human-centric though and been more interested in the other side of monsters. I felt some of the conclusions it drew were a little easy, but I think it has really interesting themes of sacrifice and a fun, slightly gruesome quest. Side note: The cover of this book is so gorgeous.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

3. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster I saw the film version with Helena Bonham Carter and Maggie Smith before I read the book. I have to confess I thought the movie was rather stale (and I hate the way they did the hair and costuming), but the book was so much fun. I found it to be quite funny and eager to make fun of all the ridiculous characters. Plus the protagonist actually learns something. And gets the guy.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

4. My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh When someone writes a memoir about their experience, there’s less suspense about the outcome because even though they engaged in risky behavior x they lived long enough to tell about it. The author is not a likable person, but she’s kind of deliciously terrible and her standards for her own behavior are so far removed from mine that I found her fascinating. Her journey to sleep (as much as possible) for a year is bizarre and privileged, but ultimately I think she does learn about why it’s worth being awake.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

5. The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman Before I read this book, the previous book I had read that was set in Los Angeles was Patrisse Khan Cullor’s book, When They Call You a Terrorist. It’s hard to imagine that these two different versions of LA exist side by side every day–the white, middle-class privilege on the one hand and the poor, Black experience of racism could not be more different. It was a startling contrast that really resonated with me as I read this otherwise kind of fluffy book. It’s protagonist, Nina, is so similar to me in her love of organization and reading and her anxiety… she’s kind of an amplified but eerily familiar version of myself. Sometimes you just need more romance in your life.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

6. The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things by Paula Byrne Though I’m not sure I loved everything about this biography, I did love the way it was organized around objects in Austen’s life and the significance that they had to her and as objects that can be used to describe the time period and give more insight to the way she would have lived.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

7. The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi This book was so good. It was my Book of the Month choice from the five that were available in August, and I really loved the way it dealt with identity, family, and love. It was sad of course, following the investigation of Vivek Oji’s death in order to explain what was so extraordinary about their life.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

8. Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik Female driven fantasy? Yes, please. On the surface this is a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin, but beneath that it follows three strong women making their way in very different classes and life situations as they use their wit to protect their families, further their fortunes, and generally kick ass and save the day.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

9. A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler It’s been a long time since a book made me cry, but this one did. I won’t give away the ending, but this story about race in a neighborhood that considers itself to be colorblind will move you. It is tragic and feels all too familiar for the times we’re in.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Have you read any of these books? Did any catch your eye? Let me know in the comments.

Reading Challenge #27: A Book with a Title that’s a Character’s Name

Title: Ethan Frome

Author: Edith Wharton

How it fulfills the challenge: This is sort of self-explanatory, but it seems like this kind of title was far more common in days of olde. There are a ton of classics that are named after their protagonists, but there are far fewer that are published now, or at least that’s what a stroll down my library’s bookshelves told me.

Genre: Classic

Quick Description: The story of one New Englander’s tragic life as told from the perspective of an outsider.

Opening line: I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.

In another moment she would step forth into the night, and his eyes, accustomed to the obscurity, would discern her as clearly as though she stood in daylight.

Highlights: Edith Wharton is a master of tragedy and manners. if Jane Austen was a pessimist, she and Wharton would get along very well. Wharton’s writing is immersive and intelligent, as well as remarkably quick-paced for a classic. I also love her introductory statement where she talks about why she chose to write this book and why she wanted it to take this form, which she says is the only thing of value an author* can say in an introduction–a statement about primary aims.

*She refers to “an author” as male rather than female, and I found this very interesting. Either she sees most authors as male, or she aimed this little introduction to be a contrast to men’s (or a certain man’s) statements, which possibly didn’t achieve the things she thought they ought to be doing.

Low Points: Well the whole story is kind of a bummer, really.

Goodreads rating: 4 stars. Probably deserves 5 on the strength of the writing, but it was just too depressing for me to love it enough to give it that rating.

Jane Austen Week: Northanger Abbey

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Hamlette is hosting a Jane Austen week, where lots of bloggers are posting on one of our favorite authors. There are discussions of her books and the various adaptations they’ve spawned in film and further. You can find all of the other posts here!

I chose to write about Northanger Abbey, one of the more overlooked Jane Austen books. It’s quite different in tone from Pride & PrejudiceEmma, or Sense & Sensibility. The heroine is a bit more naive, easily excited and frightened, and in the end learns that life isn’t like the Gothic novels she loves to read. It’s still social commentary, but in a very different way. Instead of being a novel of manners and conversation, it tends towards the meta-fictional; it’s a discussion about the nature of writing itself and how the novel and its author fit into the shape of the culture.

Northanger Abbey was the first book Jane Austen completed for publication, but it was not actually published until after she died. She sold the manuscript under a different title to the London bookseller Crosby & Co. They never published it, and eventually sold it back to Jane Austen’s brother. She ended up changing the main character’s name from Susan to Catherine and did some more revision, but ultimately it wasn’t published until six months after her death in 1817.

The story is a fairly simple one. Catherine is invited to stay in Bath with some friends of the family. While she is there she makes some friends, and is ultimately invited to Northanger in the days when “visits” lasted for weeks on end. She has a few anti-climatic adventures, and then is asked to leave, but this is Jane Austen so in the end everyone ends up happily.

At its core, Northanger Abbey is a satire of and confrontation with the popular Gothic novel. These novels, which had very little in them except for the macabre and the sensational, were designed to thrill and titillate. Jane Austen, through this work and her others, sees literature fulfilling a different purpose–that of entertainment and instruction. This goes against the more “serious” writing at the time, which suggested that anything written for entertainment at all was not worth the  paper it was written on and was meant for less serious people. In other words, it was meant for women. Austen pushes back against this idea to straddle the line between the two extremes, and by doing so makes her own monumental contribution to literature.

It’s also a novel about a women who learns how to read, not just the books that she so fancies, but the world around her as well. She has to see through what people say and learn to read their motivations.  It’s about a young woman learning that life isn’t as lurid as books would suggest, and that the truth or core of something is usually more mundane than it looks as well as much less good-natured. Austen suggests that this is a good thing–imagination has its place but being realistic means that you won’t be taken advantage of. This is pure speculation on my part, but I suspect that this is a lesson Austen herself had to learn as a writer and a young woman. The fact that this novel was ready for publication first suggests that it might be something of a manifesto for what Austen would attempt to do as a writer in the future.

Catherine Morland is not exactly the picture of a Gothic heroine, which Jane Austen makes clear from the opening sentence, “No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her to be born an heroine.” She is missing some of the more essential attributes, namely a dark and dismal past (her family being squarely middle class and still living and her childhood pleasant), a beautiful face (hers is only so-so), and intuition or a sense of fate. In short, she’s exactly the kind of girl who might be fascinated by Gothic novels because they represent the exotic and adventure. As Mr. Tilney tells her, she’s more likely to judge people based on her own good intentions and positive motivations, leaving her unable to understand or sniff out malice or even a lack of candor.

Mr. Tilney is an interesting character who is quite clever and observant. He’s not my favorite Austen leading man because his relationship with Catherine never feels quite as equal as Emma’s and Knightley’s for example or Lizzie’s and Darcy’s. However, he does his best to try and teach Catherine about herself and the world.

Northanger Abbey itself is a particularly intriguing setting for Austen. She often uses great houses as her settings (all of her heroines, no matter their sometimes precarious financial circumstances, live in what I would term a large house and have plenty of servants), but very few of them have the kind of historical weight or Gothic atmosphere that the Abbey does. But Austen does not allow the reader to bask in the romance of the setting, instead she focuses on the prosaic details. Even if Catherine doesn’t realize it at first, Northanger is nothing more than a big house, and is nothing to be in awe of or swoon over.

Catherine Morland wants to find adventures, and surely there is no better way to do so than uncovering secret letters and ancient mysteries. She’s caught spying around the house, of course, invading Mr. Tilney’s deceased mother’s rooms, but the most iconic episode of the book is her discovery of the lists. Catherine gets herself in a tizzy one stormy night and her eyes fall on a cabinet. She simply has to explore it, and she does while the wind howls. Conveniently, the key is in the cabinet, though it takes her several attempts to open the door. She searches every cranny (leaving the locked middle drawer for last)–remembering to check for false bottoms. Then she opens the last drawer and there at the back is a rolled up piece of paper. Before she can read a single word, her candle is promptly extinguished by the wind and she hops into bed, dropping the papers to the floor in her fright. She reads it in the morning, sure that it will contain all kinds of hidden secrets, and find that it contains…a few bills for the laundry and farrier. No episode could more clearly illustrate Austen’s feelings about Gothic novels. After being so scared, after building the episode in her mind up so much, there was nothing there but the trappings of economic privilege.

While Northanger Abbey is not my favorite Jane Austen novel, I think it’s a great one–especially to learn about Austen’s place in the literature of the era and to understand her opinions on novels. Although she’s often lumped together with the Bronte sisters, her goals in writing were very different. She presents herself in this first offering as a witty and independent mind whose goal is to reflect society back to itself, showing how the world has shaped the lives of the women living in it. Catherine may be one of her sillier protagonists, but she still shows the pressures of growing up into womanhood. If you haven’t read this one before, or you haven’t read it in a while, it may be time to pick this book up.

Reading Challenge #26: A Book By an Author From a Country You’ve Never Visited

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Title: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Author: Gabriel García Márquez

How it fulfills the challenge: Márquez is from Colombia, and I’ve never been outside of North America

Genre: Literary Fiction/Classic

Quick Description: A sweeping family saga in a small Caribbean town filled with super long lived residents and plenty of mystery and intrigue. It follows the lives of the members of the Buendía family through multiple generations. Each generation has their own triumphs and tragedies and in the end the ultimate struggle is against forgetting–oblivion.

“He dug so deeply into her sentiments that in search of interest he found love, because by trying to make her love him he ended up falling in love with her.”

Highlights: I don’t even know where to start with this book. There are parts that are a bit difficult because some of the names and generations start to bleed together, but the prose is so intriguing, so evocative that it doesn’t even matter. The tone of the book is always in keeping with the nature of the town itself, and the magical realism is so deftly done that it the magical seems prosaic, though never boring. It was difficult to choose just one quote because there is so much the book says about love, obsession, survival, and death. Márquez is a true master, and I can’t even begin to imagine how amazing it would be to read this book in Spanish.

My Goodreads Rating: 5 stars

My Holiday Book Haul

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I’m so lucky to have such a wonderful family. Even though the holidays were really hard this year because of my Papa’s health, it was still wonderful to take the week with my fiance to see all my family and so many friends back in Portland. I miss them already.

For Christmas, my family does a holiday gift exchange–a “stocking” filled to the brim with goodies of various sizes. My Papa had my stocking this year, but since he wasn’t able to go shopping my Nana took it over. She and my mom and my aunt apparently all had way too much fun at Macy’s on Black Friday and I received a ton of Fiestaware (which is the china/dishware that I was going to ask people to get us for our wedding) in all different colors. And along with my many colored dishes, I was given a ton of used books. Basically the best Christmas ever.

Some of these I actually picked up for myself and then they were added into my stocking (that would be the top three). This is because when I volunteer at the Mini Monday book sale for my Friends of the Library I’m constantly around used books. I really enjoyed E. Annie Proulx when I read her last year, and I liked Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, and the other book just caught my eye.

My mom picked up the rest of the books for me–like me she has a thing for used books. She knows I love to collect older editions of Shakespeare, and a little birdy (aka me) let her know that I wanted a copy of Anne Frank’s Diary and hadn’t read anything by D.H. Lawrence (though I own a copy of Women in Love).

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She also got me some movie star biographies/autobiographies, since I love to read about Hollywood–including Cary Elwes’ book, which I was very, very excited about. I also received Wicked and Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, which I didn’t have copies of before, and a new (to me) Margaret Atwood book. So much fun!

I’m so excited to get reading! Did you receive a book you really wanted for the holidays? Let me know in the comments!

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten of My All Time Favorites: 100 Years Old or More Classics Edition

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature from The Broke and the Bookish.

I usually don’t like being asked about my favorite book (or my favorite film). There are so many books I love, and it’s difficult to give any answer. Do you say the book you’ve loved the longest (The Wizard of Oz)? The book that influenced you so much when you were growing up (The Diary of Anne Frank)? The series that you reread at least once a year because it’s still amazing (Harry Potter)? The series that blew your mind as a teenager (The Incarnations of Immortality)? Your favorite book by your favorite author (The Importance of Being Earnest and/or Emma)? The best contemporary novel you’ve read in a long time (White Teeth and/or Possession)? Your favorite modern classic (The Master and Margarita)? I have no idea how to judge this. Does poetry count? Do plays? Do you pick one per genre?

And then there’s the classic problem–that when asked this question I forget all the books that I’ve read. Or that I’ve ever read books. I just sit there.

I really need to prepare an answer to this question…

So when presented with this week’s topic–10 all time favorites–I knew I’d have to break it down by genre. So I chose classics. And to make it easier on myself I only picked classics that have been around for over a hundred years. And I didn’t include poetry, though a few plays snuck in. They couldn’t help themselves. They really wanted to be on this list.

Here we go. These are in chronological order.

  • Don Quixote–Miguel de Cervantes (1605)

This book is great–it wasn’t an easy read in high school–but I love that it inspired it’s own adjective (quixotic) and that it talks about a man who believes his own fairy tales.

  • Much Ado About Nothing–William Shakespeare (first performed 1612)

This is my favorite Shakespeare play. Benedick and Beatrice are so witty–I think this is Shakespeare’s most humorous work.

  • Pride & Prejudice–Jane Austen (1813)

Can you even create a favorites list without this book?

  • Emma–Jane Austen (1815)

My favorite Austen work. I have no idea why it speaks to me more than P&P (I honestly identify more with Lizzie). I think it might be because I love Mr. Knightley more than Mr. Darcy. Also the matchmaking is priceless.

  • Jane Eyre–Charlotte Bronte (1847)

I only recently read this book, but it was everything I hoped it would be and now I have to read it again.

  • The Portrait of a Lady–Henry James (1881)

This book was recommended to me by a professor and she was spot on. This book is amazing with a heroine that is as naive and hopeful as she is intelligent.

  • One Thousand and One Nights–translated by Sir Richard Burton (1885)

These stories will always have a special place in my heart. I tend to collect different editions when I find them.

  • The Picture of Dorian Gray–Oscar Wilde (1890)

O Wilde! I will love you forever. Your wit, your charm, your imagination…

  • The Importance of Being Earnest–Oscar Wilde (1895)

Hands down one of the wittiest/silliest plays ever. It’s definitely more a product of its time than anything by Shakespeare, but it does its job so well. And it has the most quotable lines like “In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.”

  • Pygmalion–George Bernard Shaw (1913)

Maybe it’s because I’ve seen My Fair Lady far too many times. But really I don’t see how anyone could not like this play. It reads really well, and I love the way it discloses its source material right in the title.

 

Did one of your favorites pop up here? Did I miss your favorite classic? Let me know in the comments!