Books Blog: books.elliottback.com

In an incredible design idea, Penguin Books UK is experimenting with using blank art-quality paper for covers:

The tag line is ‘Books by the Greats, Covers by You’, and throughout the rush to design the (back) covers, get the right paper, and tell people about them, we’ve had a really great time.  The covers are art-quality paper, and from internal Penguin efforts we know that they hold ink, paint, pencil and glue (see the first efforts here).  Each one comes shrink-wrapped so the paper doesn’t get dirty, and I hope people might give them as gifts.

Here’s a sample cover they linked on their blog:

Next, books will come without any text–a “draw your own novel” approach.

You’ve seen it, the movie comes out and the book has to rock a new cover. Well, now Christopher Paolini’s masterpiece Eragon got a makeover:

Dictionary.com does the etymology of this fabulous word for us:

Today’s word has taken an amazing journey through many different languages, where it acquired meanings ranging from “churl” to “king.” It originated as Proto-Germanic *karilaz. The Old Norse descendant of this word became karl “old man,” a word which spread throughout the Germanic languages as a man’s name. In Old High German, the ancestor of modern German, it became karal “man, husband” (today Kerl “guy, fellow”) whence it was borrowed into French as “Charles” and Medieval Latin as “Carolus.” Charlemagne [Charles le magne] “Charles the Great” had such an impact on Europe, that the Slavic nations borrowed his name as their general word for “king” (e.g. Serbian kralj, Russian korol’). In Old English, however, the word took a nose dive in the opposite direction: in ceorl the meaning dropped from “old man” to “peasant,” whose behavior the upper classes always considered “churlish.” Since the upper classes have historically determined how we speak, a churl is what he is today.

Churlish (a):  like a churl; rude; boorish.  And it has a fascinating sound.

I’m shocked that Juniper Bank, who run the credit Mastercards for Apple Corp., would make such a terrible pun on my name:

It’s almost as bad as when someone in 9th grade said, “Get to the Bäck of the class, Elliott.”