Illustrated wonders

Books about bools have long been a genre of their own, but recently there seems to be developing a new sub-genre — art books about books.

I recently commented here about  So You Think You're a Bookworm? and A Library of Misremembered Books, both dominated by their artwork. Several months ago I reviewed Bibliophile, in which Jane Mount presents drawings of book covers, bookstores and even bookstore cats. Today I will mention two others.

I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf by Grant Snider is a wonder, though I don't know quite how to describe it. Snider is a writer and a comic artist who loves books, so he combines those interests here in a series of creative comic strips with titles like "Some potential bookmarks" (these include balloons and a feather, even a bonsai tree) and "Writing a poem is like riding a bicycle" ("Impressive at a young age ... but considered eccentric among adults.")

All this is delightful and something you will probably want to reread before you loan it to your best friends.

Then there's The Call Me Ishmael Phone Book by Stephanie Kent and Logan Smalley, which incredibly enough is an actual phone book. But it's a phone book unlike any you've ever seen before and something only a bibliophile could love.

The clever idea is this: You can dial 774-325-0503 and either record your comments about what a certain book means to you or listen to other people's recorded comments about their own favorite books. The four-digit numbers in the phone book are next to book titles. Dial 3778, for example, to hear what someone thinks of Moby-Dick, the source of the "Call me Ishmael" line. Many books are listed multiple times.

So where does the art come in? Well, like the Yellow Pages, this book has ads on virtually every page, illustrated "ads" that serve as literary puzzles. You can probably guess which books are referred to by Ahab's Whale Tours and Sewell's Stables. Dial the numbers on the ads to see if you're right. In addition, the authors list bookstores in every state in the union and provide numbers for stories about many of these stores.

You thought interactive books were for kids? Think again. Here's a book that will provide any book lover of any age with hours of fun.