Caustic Cover Critic

A book I just got and am looking forward to reading is Chang-rae Lee's On Such a Full Sea, his first foray into science-fiction. My sense is that Lee is too subtle and intelligent a writer to make the sort of mess most 'literary' novelists make when they jump genre boundaries, and I hope to be proven right. I really lied the cover when it was first shown...

..but didn't know until after I'd bought it that there was a special edition Penguin was releasing making use of a 3D-printed plastic slipcase. (I've experimented, so far not very successfully, with 3D printing myself, but the capabilities of the machines so far exceed my limited digital modelling skills--though nothing I've done has gone as poorly as these things.) Both versions of the book were designed by Helen Yentus.

It's probably for the best that I didn't know about this, really, given that: a) I can't afford it at US$150, and b) trying to cram this into my already groaning shelves would cause some serious carnage to the back cover of Rebecca Lee's rather excellent Bobcat, a book too pretty to assault in this way.

The Casual Optimist features a video about the making of the slipcase.