PROMPT: Ever buy a book for its design?

(image from McSweeney's . . . I love them!)

This is a tough question to answer. Not because I have to work to think about one example, it's that I have to narrow down a huge list to just one example. I could list House of Leaves or The Town that Forgot How to Breathe (the trade paperback, not the hardcover) or City of Saints and Madmen or more and more and more.

But I think this is where I take the chance to talk about McSweeney's, whose design is consistently mind-blowing and envelope pushing. I can't sum it up any better than they do:

McSweeney's Quarterly Concern publishes on a roughly quarterly schedule, and we try to make each issue very different from the last. One issue came in a box, one was Icelandic, and one looks like a pile of mail. In all, we give you groundbreaking fiction and much more.

And it wouldn't work if it was just the design. Oh, the design is certainly what interested in the publication. And when there was a $5 for every back issue sale at the end of Summer last year, I jumped at the chance to pick up a bunch of copies. The first one I pulled out of the box was issue #24 (picture above) which is a tri-fold, hardcover magazine.

I know! It doesn't make any sense! Other issues have been packaged to look like a pile of mail, others included a comb, one had a story written on a series of playing cards that you could shuffle and re-tell the story, and yet another was eight small hardcover books that formed a larger cover when arranged correctly. The design is stunning.

Thankfully, the fiction inside is engaging and well done. They've even published their share of genre people (or people with a connection to genre) like Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link, Stephen King, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Brendan Connell, and Shelley Jackson among others. I look forward to new issues as much for the fiction as I do for the design.

Part of what makes McSweeney's (both the magazine and the press of the same name) work is that it was founded by Dave Eggers. Yes, pulitzer-prize-winning Dave Eggers. He might not be your cup of tea, but I think Eggers is brilliant. And his writing success has given him freedom to do all sorts of interesting editorial things like founding nonprofit writing workshops called 826 Valencia around the country.

I would be kidding myself if I didn't admit I was jealous of Mr. Eggers. But hey, I think he's doing what he does through a combination of talent and hard work. Still, if he wanted to open an 826 workshop in Madison, I know someone who would be thrilled to run it.

Also, the website has been updated to indicate issue 17/18 as the current issue. There are links to my Twitter feed and Facebook account. There are also a few new pages like 'art' and 'awards.'