{"id":1346,"date":"2013-12-22T06:53:08","date_gmt":"2013-12-22T11:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=1346"},"modified":"2020-02-29T07:58:28","modified_gmt":"2020-02-29T12:58:28","slug":"a-book-and-its-cover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=1346","title":{"rendered":"A Book AND Its Cover"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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What makes you pick up a new release from the tables at the front of Barnes & Noble? You might recognize the title, or the author, or it might just be the cover. Some books cry out to be investigated further. A good cover design captures the feel of the novel and the browser\u2019s eye with equal facility. Years later, just seeing the leafy jungle cover of One Hundred Years of Solitude<\/i> brings back the whole story.<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/i> has published its annual \u201c15 best\u201d compilation of covers (slide show<\/a>). I\u2019d need to know more about some of the books to know whether the covers really nailed it, but I must say the amazingly simple cover for the reissue of Erica Jong\u2019s Fear of Flying<\/i> certainly does. It\u2019s fearless and would certainly have failed a censor\u2019s scrutiny, if there were such a post as Defender of Dust Jacket Decorum.<\/p>\n

The ability to capture the essence of a book is very different from the generic approaches typically used in genre fiction. The shootouts, dark alleys, and steamy sex on these covers, although possibly eye-catching, could pretty much be used on any number of Western, mystery, and romance novels. (A quick and clever blog post<\/a> on the latter can be found here.) \"\"<\/p>\n

In the Times<\/i> compilation, see whether you like the covers for F \u2013 Poems<\/i> by Franz Wright and Middle C<\/i> by William H. Gass as much as I did. I\u2019m tired of the chalkboard writing style of The Art of Sleeping Alone, <\/i>first noticed last year on The Fault in Our Stars<\/i>. If you look at the B&N tables just from a design perspective, you can spot trends and copycats. Book jacket design, like everything else designy, has fashions and fads. Amazon\u2019s blurb for Phil Baines\u2019s Penguin by Design<\/a><\/i>, calls the parade of covers for the publisher\u2019s various book lines, which began marching forth in 1935, to be \u201ca constantly evolving part of Anglo-American culture and design history.\u201d Another intriguing book on the topic is Alan Powers\u2019s Front Cover<\/a><\/i>. Powers also has assembled a collection of children\u2019s book covers<\/a> and their many influential illustrators.<\/p>\n

\"\"Book covers are designed to appeal to specific readers, which creates an interesting gender dilemma. Check that B&N table and ask yourself, is this a book for men or women or both? Women writers are concerned their books receive the \u201cpretty\u201d treatment, which means men are very unlikely to read them. More on this issue here<\/a>\u2014and be sure to check out this post\u2019s coverflip slides, which show how covers of popular books might have been presented had the authors been the other gender. Eye-opening.<\/p>\n

Notable covers on books I read this year included the one for Barbara Kingsolver\u2019s Flight Behavior<\/i>. The blue version (top), which I have (or had, since I seem to have made the mistake of lending it out), suggests the massing and subtle movement of butterflies in the trees, the phenomenon that leveraged the story\u2019s action. I much prefer it to the more literal treatment given the Kindle edition (middle) or, least imaginative of all, the UK edition (bottom).<\/p>\n

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Another gem was the cover for Herman Koch\u2019s The Dinner<\/i>, which gives a pretty darn accurate assessment of how that particular meal went. A linen tablecloth can do only so much.<\/p>\n

My take on both these books can be found in the Reading . . . section of this website, with The Dinner<\/em> in the audio list.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What makes you pick up a new release from the tables at the front of Barnes & Noble? You might recognize the title, or the author, or it might just be the cover. Some books cry out to be investigated … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40,63,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-marketing","category-promotion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-lI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1346"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8417,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346\/revisions\/8417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}