Hasta La Gadget!

I’m sure your bookshelves are chockful of the classics. Mine, on the other hand have nothing but graphic novels, video games Blu-ray discs and DVDs. Oh, and a bunch of collectible toys and robots. I suppose I’m not that well-read these days thanks to the advent of the internet, and numerous other digital distractions. At least I can LOOK like I’m more of a bookworm if I outfit all of my games with these covers.

These custom covers by video game lover JamesBit are perfect for making your game discs look like books. James has come up with a design that’s reminiscent of Penguin Books‘ iconic minimal style, but with an Atari 2600 controller in place of the penguin.

Six bucks will get you a set of three covers, customized to your specific video games and discs. For that price, you’ll only get a PDF that you need to print out yourself, but James does the hard work of making it look good, filling in the design template and prepping the PDF for you. If you have a ton of discs, he’ll cut the price to $1.49 each. Head on over to Etsy to order yours now.

Kobo’s not quite done with the news tonight. In addition to an e-reader, three tablets and Pocket integration, the Canadian-turned-Japanese company has also got some announcements on the content side of things. First up is the addition of magazines to its store, bringing titles from Conde Nast, Hearst and a number of other publishers to its proprietary tablets and iOS / Android apps. Also on the docket is a brand new kids store that features safe-searching and nearly 100,000 offerings, including the likes of Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Hunger Games titles. Magazines are coming to Kobo’s mobile app in September and will be available for its new tablets when they launch the following month.

Filed under: Tablets, Software

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Boiling down the essence of a book into a single, striking image is a incredible challenge. Part of the fun of browsing for new books is checking out the various artistic interpretations of your favorite titles—while shamelessly judging each and every unknown by what’s emblazoned on the front.

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Google’s N-Gram Viewer is a wonderful and under-appreciated thing: At the click of a mouse, it lets you search Google Books’ huge corpus of material for specific words and combinations of words. This N-Gram analysis, for example, maps the mention of ten different cities in every book written between 1800 and 2000, charting the wax and wane of famous metropolises in the popular consciousness.

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Classic novels tend to have equally classic cover art. For example, when you think of The Great Gatsby, your mind likely goes to a pair of half-closed eyes floating over a glittering, cobalt city. But what if designers were given a chance to rethink these covers entirely? That’s the concept behind Recovering The Classics, a site that’s crowdsourcing new art for 50 iconic books.

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