Once Around the Web, Please

• The last time I read Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915) was probably in a high-school English class, and I wasn’t all that hot on it. I never figured to own a copy. However, this New York Times story convinced me to purchase the new Norton paperback edition of Kafka’s book, based solely on designer Jamie Keenan’s cover. Maybe I’ll appreciate the story better on second reading.

• I already knew about a few of the eye-catching venetian blind covers Pulp International featured recently, but not all.

• The very first, 1953 issue of Manhunt!

• A particularly beautiful cover of The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales.

• I, for one, had never heard of this “novel about the abortion racket,” but it must have made a huge, likely negative impact when it was published back in 1950.

• And here’s more information about Syd Dyke, the post-World War II illustrator who gave that controversial novel its cover image.

• Finally, Print magazine recently posted the distinctive jackets from 19 new books that are already in stores or will be on their way there soon. I’m particularly fond of Peter Mendelsund’s front for Silence Once Begun as well as the cover of Never Love a Gambler, designed by Rodrigo Corral and Rachel Adam Rogers.