I would love for somebody to do that,” she says, adding that on the day we talked she’d just found a new one, Seth Rogen’s “Yearbook,” which has a series of yearbook-like illustrations on it. Has anyone suggested a book she didn’t know? “No, they haven’t. “I have to know what other books have these fun little surprises underneath.” “Once you know there’s something hidden under there,” she says. (Instead, I asked an industry source who didn’t know what the term might be, so just call them what you like, people.) While she’s not sure what the industry term is for decorated book covers, she said she’s seen them referred to as “naked hardcovers” and “undies,” and I will totally take her word for it because moments after I began googling those search terms I realized I’d made a grave error. “I’m not sure when I noticed that some books have it, but it’s kind of become an obsession,” says Null, who says that when she’s unboxing stock or adding books to tables she will “quickly flip the cover off to see” if there’s anything interesting underneath. So I reached out to the store and got to speak with the person responsible for bringing these to my attention, Serena Null, a supervisor-bookseller at the store who put together the display. A close-up look at Haruki Murakami’s “First Person Singular.” (Photo by Erik Pedersen)įor all this cover’s energy and charm, it’s unlikely I would have ever seen it unless I’d been alerted to it. It’s a total departure from the dust jacket design, and I absolutely love it. The most eye-catching, however, was Chip Kidd’s interior design for Haruki Murakami’s “First Person Singular.” Dubbed a “Murakami Records Productions,” it features a blue-tinted photo of a New York City jazz club during an engagement by Charlie Parker and sports the words “Plays Bossa Nova” across the front like an album. Schwab’s “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.” I stopped in at the Hastings Ranch branch of Vroman’s bookstore recently and came across a display of books without their dust jackets that included Mark Haskell Smith’s “Rude Talk in Athens,” Shea Ernshaw’s “A History of Wild Places” and the anniversary edition of V.E. As in, what’s going on in that unseen space between the dust jacket and the book? Last week, we talked book covers, and this time we’ll be slipping under those covers.

Books by bonnie garmus