“What came out of those Zoom meetings was a sense of frustration that books are increasingly viewed as props or as interior decor—especially with the way they are set-dressed for social media,” he says. “Any assessment of how they are designed has become so paper-thin as to be largely meaningless.”
Beyond niche design sites and click baity trend pieces, there’s not much in the way of book cover discourse. So Pearson decided to do something about it. He hammered out the idea with designer Jon Gray as Jack Smyth rallied the project along. The result: The Book Cover Review, a veritable New Yorker of the topic.
Cabbage is a special friend. It doesn’t spring to mind as often as others do. It’s challenging in many ways. It doesn’t necessarily get along with my other friends. I still haven’t managed to get my children to love it, apart from a lemony slaw I once made for them that was so creamy and sour you couldn’t taste much else.
If I look at other food writers and cooks, I am definitely not the only one with a complex attitude toward cabbage. There aren’t many who would pour their hearts out in an unmitigated love serenade to the forebear of all brassicas. The only one I can think of is Nora Ephron, with her piece “The Lost Strudel” — admittedly less of a love song and more of an elegy.
We live at a time when many environmentalists feel helpless next to mega-rich forces who seem able to despoil the planet as they wish and to avoid any governmental attempts to check them. In Birnam Wood, we see the consequences of this gap in power, and the results are not pretty.
Lovers of classical ballet who don’t want to see the sausage being made might do well to avoid “Don’t Think, Dear.” But I found myself feeling something like gratitude: For maybe the first time ever, I was glad I had missed out on all ballet had to offer me.