Tuesday 17 April 2012

Plastic Box

Another big book being attractively broken up into three volumes in a box: the paperback edition of Haruki Murakami's 1Q84. Click for bigger version.



Design by John Gall for Vintage US. A shame it's not in the service of a better writer and book, but it's still nice. Frankly, I wouldn't mind if all really big modern books were published like these. If nobody's going to edit the bastards, at least let's make them pretty.

6 comments:

matthew. said...

The last three sentences of your post are the truest words that have ever been typed on this site, I think. The "3 Volume" edition of a novel is something I'd like to see the return of. I can think of two other novels recently published like this: Skippy Dies and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Too bad of these three, only Skippy Dies was any good.

JRSM said...

Yes, 'Skippy Dies' was very enjoyable. And for some reason, breaking the books up into three smaller volumes makes them more approachable, too--for some reason, reading three 200-300 page volumes seems much more achievable than one 900-page behemoth,

Craig D. said...

Brilliant. Instead of making sure the editors are doing their jobs, telling their writers to cut the filler horseshit from their self-indulgent novels, we'll just keep publishing huge first drafts, only now we'll cut them into three books and charge more money for them.

Fuck you, publishing industry.

JRSM said...

That's another way of putting it.

Anonymous said...

Wasn't it originally 3 volumes in Japan?

JRSM said...

I believe so--and published as 2 separate books in the UK.