20 Most Iconic Book Cover Designs?

Online gallery includes classic novels by Salinger, Heller, Lee and Ellison

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange. Design: David Pelham

Flavorwire lists its top 20 book cover designs (link via Susan Tomaselli) [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• The Book Cover Club
• Book Cover Archive
• The Great Gatsby: Re-Covered
• Peter Mendelsund's Book Designs
• Peter Mendelsund on Franz Kafka
• Will Self Paperbacks get a new look

J. M. Coetzee, Inner Workings: Essays 2000-2005

Literary blog reviews Coetzee essay collection

Times Flow Stemmed has posted a review of J. M. Coetzee's Inner Workings: Essays 2000-2005: 'Literary essays by novelists are rarely worth reading. Coetzee, like Woolf and Kundera, is an exception. Inner Workings is compiled from five introductions by Coetzee to contemporary editions of works by Graham Greene, Arthur Miller, Robert Musil, Samuel Beckett and Hugo Claus, together with 15 essays for The New York Review of Books.' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Video Interview with J. M. Coetzee
• David Attwell interviews J. M. Coetzee

Essential Jewish Literature

Jason Diamond lists the Top 50 Jewish works of the last 100 years

American-Jewish novelist Philip Roth

Jason Diamond, who writes for Jewcy, has compiled a list of the greatest Jewish literature of the last 100 years. Some wonderful choices are included, from Paul Auster's postmodern New York Trilogy to Joseph Heller's WWII satire, Catch 22, with Kafka, Proust and Salinger dominating the top spots. While the list does not claim to be definitive, it does offer a fascinating glimpse into a rich cultural history, and a formidable literary heritage. But Diamond's selection is perhaps most distinctive for its variety. The top ten are all distinctive testaments to modern Jewish identity, but they are also valuable as diverse and imaginative documents of twentieth century life (link via Tablet Magazine):

1. The Metamorphosis (1915) by Franz Kafka
2. In Search of Lost Time (1913) by Marcel Proust
3. Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) by Philip Roth
4. Death of a Salesman (1949) by Arthur Miller
5. The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J.D. Salinger
6. The Trial (1925) by Franz Kafka
7. Herzog (1964) by Saul Bellow
8. The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories (1971) by Cynthia Ozick
9. A Contract With God (1978) by Will Eisner
10. Call it Sleep (1934) by Henry Roth

Source: Jason Diamond, 'The 50 Most Essential Works Of Jewish Fiction Of The Last 100 Years', Jewcy, 9 February 2011