Photo: Melissa Hom

Early reviews make Roberto Bolaño's swan song, 2666, sound like rough, thrilling sex trapped between book flaps. There's only one problem with the Book of the Season: It's long. Like, 912 pages long. And we've still got two unfinished Pynchon cinderblocks tormenting our bookshelves. So thank God FSG remembered Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (which made an unusual debut in both cloth and paper) and tapped design hotshot Charlotte Strick (The Secret Life of Words, Varieties of Disturbance) to design two freaky-beautiful editions. To judge by its covers, 2666 looks quadruply awesome.

As our titillating photos tease, 2666 is being printed in a hefty hardback edition that samples Gustave Moreau's Jupiter and Semele, and a boxed tripartite edition, which borrows from Cy Twombly and plunders Albertus Seba's Cabinet of Natural Curiosities. We're buying the box set for two reasons: First, it's subway-portable (like a retro Kindle). Second, it's risk-free. In a very conceivable worst-case scenario many years from now, this won't be just another unread masterpiece that will forever remind us of our shortcomings. It will be a collectible objet d'art in (again, worst-case scenario) pristine condition.

Photo: Melissa Hom