Bringhurst and Hochuli/Kinross were my Bibles as I learned the craft of book design. Rich Hendel's book, too. As I got more experienced, I began to see that there was an art to it as well. All of which is to say I came to mix and match things that looked attractive to my eye, taking into account what types the material called for and at what size and leading. You have to trust your instincts applied to what you've learned, without doing "cute" design that distracts the reader.

Hi Nick,
Not actually answering your question but, I recently created a grid calculator which is available online at http://layoutgridcalculator.com
please have a look at the 'golden canon' page, this will set a grid according to Tsichichold golden canon.

Steve, I agree: Richard Hendel’s books (“On Book Design” and “Aspects of Contemporary Book Design”) are great reads in addition the Bringhurst’s bible. I also enjoyed Jan Tschichold’s essays.

Nick, I’m by far no expert in book design but I enjoy it very much. What helped me most was trial-and-error, which is probably what Steve is also saying. Jump into a design, print it, and look at it. Tweak it a dozen times, print them, spread them all side-by-side, and feel out which works best for you. I found that it’s not just the dimensions of the page and text block, but the interplay of typeface, letter- and line spacing (defining the “color” of the text block), text block dimensions and placement wrt. page dimensions, and so forth.

Most of all… have fun :)