Tagged: judging a book by its cover

Castle

Castle

posted on June 8th, 2011 by Ryan Rivas

Castle
by J. Robert Lennon
Gray Wolf Press, 2009

Have you not read Castle? What the hell is wrong with you!

As for the cover–that’s the concern here after all–the cover perfectly evokes the mystery within, though you won’t truly know it until you read the book.

At first the cover seems like three basic elements put together in a pleasing way, but the really  impressive aspect is the precision with which this cover, in its simplicity, captures the feel and subtleties of the book, that kind of vague mind-glow you feel when you put it down after finishing, which is exactly what a cover should do.

Elements one and two: the forest and the deer. In this novel,  you will spend a lot of time in the forest with symbolic white deer. The book has many other characters, settings and elements that could have been picked at random from a stockpile, but these two images hone in on the essential mood of the book (spooky, mysterious) without giving anything away (and the designer could have easily done something silly like portraying a–oh I don’t know–castle!). Kudos to designer Kyle G. Hunter for his excellent use of istockphoto.com. Had the site not been credited in the book I’d have never known that’s where the images came from.

The final element of the cover does nod to the narrator/main character, however,  I didn’t notice this until after I finished the book, so subtle the touch. The title is a simple sans-serif font, but colored with a certain kind of camouflage. What could this signify? The answer is not in the blurbs or the jacket description, but one small mystery of many in the book.  And behind our camo-Castle we have what appears to be thick black marker, the kind you’d see on a secret document with blacked-out text. What could this signify about our main character? Like I said, there’s no way to really know without reading, but what I can say without ruining anything is it is yet another symbol, a clue to the narrator’s psyche and the trick to this book’s allure: concealment.

It’s a great finishing touch that the forest on the front cover fades around the spine and into the back cover, deeper and darker into the woods.  It’s another brilliant reference to the experience of reading Castle: the more light that’s shed on what the plot conceals, the darker and darker the actual content of this novel gets.   So, basically, I guess you could say, sort of, that my point is, read the damn book already.

Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian

posted on May 27th, 2011 by Ryan Rivas

Blood Meridian
by Cormac McCarthy
First Vintage Edition, 1992

Nothing about this cover prepares the reader for what’s inside. The book’s subtitle, Or the Evening Redness in the West, probably warrants an ominous hint of red in the design, but there is none to be found. Instead, we’re given this simple layout: the author’s name at the top; the title in a decorative font that hints at dripping blood (though this is coincidental, because all McCarthy’s Vintage books sport this look); a grainy photo of a vague western landscape in the middle; and the most shocking waste of a space at the bottom: a giant blurb, too widely spaced and center-aligned, which to me smacks of laziness. It seems as if Vintage simply ran the book, which the blurb attests is a masterpiece, through its Cormac McCarthy template. It’s not the worst book cover in the world, but it’s no way to treat a masterpiece.

And if there is such a thing as a masterpiece, then Blood Meridian qualifies. It’s one of the most amazing and disturbing novels I’ve ever read. If I were to design its cover, I might forgo all images and decorative fonts entirely and simply include a sub-sub-title: Not for the faint of heart.

I don’t get motion sickness. I don’t get queasy. But certain scenes within (a baby, a Comanche, a sharp rock) caused me to drop the book and clutch my stomach to keep its contents down.  I’ve never been so literally moved by fiction. But as gruesome as some of the scenes are—this book is set at the height of the US scalp trade—it wasn’t the simple fact of the violence that made me ill, but the graceful and often poetic ways in which McCarthy portrays something like, say, infanticide.

How do you visually represent the content of a book like this? Why not start with its greatest strength. The power of Blood Meridian isn’t just its unflinching images of violence, but the language used to evoke it. So maybe Not for the faint of heart are not the right words for the cover, but it’s the right idea. Maybe all the cover needs is words.

If anything redeems the design of Blood Meridian it’s the typography. The typeface in this Vintage series perfectly captures the haunting, old-timey, biblical prose style, and makes each word seem all the more important and inevitable. If only the designer had transferred the spirit of the interior to the book’s cover. No images at all, just the author and title. Or better yet, simply start the book on the cover, featuring the first paragraph of the book a la Dave Eggers’ You Shall Know Our Velocity (one of my favorite book covers), so that readers are drawn in immediately, and the overall result is a book that looks not like a contemporary novel, but an artifact, a throwback to the time period about which it was written. This would have required McCarthy to scrap his three lengthy epigraphs and Vintage to move the copyrights and bells and whistles to the back of the book, but I must admit, it would have been pretty fucking cool.

At least McCarthy’s reputation was well established before this version of the book was released in ’92, so that new readers may not have made a snap judgment and thought, Eh, another western. But what about new authors whose cover designers have no emotional stock in the book? I have to admit, with so much out there to read, if a book I’ve never heard of looks lame, and the title can’t carry it, I won’t even pick it up to read the first paragraph. And in an industry where e-books and e-readers are basically legit, shouldn’t the books we do put into the physical world be beautiful and whole and have designs that do justice to the content? Yes. The answer is yes.

Beauty in the Eyes of the Bookholder

Beauty in the Eyes of the Bookholder

posted on January 26th, 2011 by Dina Mack

Steve Martin’s novel An Object of Beauty “examines the glamour and the subterfuge of the fine art world in New York city,” as summarized by the publisher. But why did I buy the book? Why the cover, of course. There, I said it. I regularly judge books by their covers. I have since taking my first steps and wearing my first pair of glasses.

Now, let’s get back to this book. First, it’s a lovely white color. The jacket paper has a bit of tooth, gives it that canvas vibe. The title and author’s name pop–colorful and glossy–that gloss on matte feel is working for me. Hmmm … seems as though it could have been painted on. Perfect, the novel is about art. The title and author lettering are in beautiful proportion and offset with handwritten words “a novel.” 3B pencil for those words? I’m not as drawn to  the book look once I strip off its cover. Also it doesn’t have deckled edges, which I do gravitate toward. But, one could say that the book’s characters reside within a contemporary setting, so the deckles may feel a bit old fashioned in this context.

Am I over thinking things? Perhaps. But, this is the way I’m wired. I appreciate objects of beauty. Books notwithstanding. Ok, books are pretty much up there on the top tier. So thank you Anne Twomey for your art direction and Darren Booth for the hand lettering and papers.  Also, thank you Steve Martin for a pretty good read. While I’m at it, thanks for “The Jerk,”  “Wild and crazy guy,” and “It’s impossible. To put a Cadillac up your nose. It’s just impossible.”

I value my senses, so I’ll continue to consider the virtues of my book fetish and know/no I’m not alone. I’m exploring the fit and fate of the book in our current culture within my own artwork.  And now it seems that I fit squarely within one of Ann Mack’s 2011 trend predictions: “To balance our increasing immersion in the digital world, people will embrace face-to-face gatherings and digital downtime, and come to fetishize physical objects once considered humdrum.” You may say, “Duh, obvious,” or “Who cares. I predicted that years ago,” and not admit to seeing a smidgen of your “self” lumped in with the masses, but I predict you will. In the meantime, if you’re suffering from the weight of any hardbacks while you’re “clearing out” to “downsize your life” or to “go green,” I’m your go-to girl.

Wittgenstein’s Mistress

Wittgenstein’s Mistress

posted on February 20th, 2010 by Ryan Rivas

Wittgenstein’s Mistress
by David Markson
Dalkey Archive, 2006

Prior to the re-release by Dalkey Archive, this novel featured waves receding on an empty beachfront. Not bad looking, somewhat of a literary clichĂ©, and definitely not worth showing you. If you’ve read the last few Judging a Book posts, you might have already guessed that I like this book because its first sentence is on the front cover, a style that has become something of an obsession.

My only complaint about this book is the blurb on the front disrupting the sentence. Couldn’t it have simply been moved to the back cover? Anyhow, I came across this novel randomly, and I have not read it, but, as it should be, the first line was intriguing and so I read the description and was pleased to find that the story is told by a woman at her typewriter. This woman is also apparently insane. So with little knowledge of the book’s content, I can still say the typewriter face–something slightly unsettling about how the bold thins and fades–is a good choice.

Last time I asked for your favorite first sentences, and if you were handy with Photoshop, a cover mock up that featured them. I didn’t realize at the time that comments weren’t activated. They will be at some point very soon, and I welcome you to put in your two cents. To you bored and brilliant souls, send mock ups to ryan@burrowpress.com.

In the meantime, here are two covers I cooked up. Note: I am not, by trade, a designer. I am, however, as I mentioned above, somewhat obsessed.

Conundrum

Conundrum

posted on February 6th, 2010 by Ryan Rivas

Conundrum
by Jan Morris
New York Review of Books, 2006

This book has entered my world via The Millions via Fuck Yeah NYRB. I had not heard of it until this morning, but it caught my eye because its cover resembles one of my favorite books (inside and out) which was recently mentioned in this column: You Shall Know Our Velocity.

Covers that feature the book’s first sentences are brilliant. I usually judge the cover before I decide to read the first sentence or paragraph, and this strategy totally preempts that and says, No, sir, you will begin reading me from the moment you pick me up.

On second thought, it’s only brilliant when the first sentence, as an author I spoke to recently put it, “lights a fuse.” If that first line makes you want to follow the book to the end, then it did its job. Eggers’ YSKOV takes the idea to its logical limit, having the first lines on the cover, then forgoing all copyright, dedications and epigraphs and jumping right into the story… and not just on the first loose page, but on the very first page, the one glued to the back side of the cover. This works because I was drawn in and not met with any unwanted information to stumble over on my way to the rest of the story.

While I have little interest in transgender studies, I might read this book. I’d definitely consider buying it if I saw it in a store. The placement of the text and the simple color choice make it much more appealing than the earlier version (on the right). Not only is it a bit of an eye-shock, which is not always bad, but it makes the mistake of over-explaining the content. I mean come on: “from James to Jan?” Is this a movie poster or a book cover? I thought the bad tagline was reserved for those thirty-book romance novel series and hospital dramas (don’t ask how I know about these). But it’s not just that. The cover, as you can plainly read, goes on to explain that you’ll be reading “an extraordinary personal narrative of transexualism.” Great, a sub-sub title that smacks of a news anchor introducing a story.

So what might accomplish explaining the content in a less cheesy, more tasteful manner? Well that would be the NYRB cover, because it doesn’t have to look like it’s selling anything. It lets the story speak for itself. And whadduhyah know? When I read those lines, I figured that I was about to read an extraordinary personal narrative, not a 60 Minutes Special Report.

To reiterate, first sentences are vital, not only to a story itself, but to any story that wants to feature its first sentences on the cover… So can you think of any other really great first sentences? Can you think of any awful ones? Are you handy with Photoshop? Send me a mockup and I’ll post it in a special edition of this colum.

The Convalescent

The Convalescent

posted on January 9th, 2010 by Ryan Rivas

The Convalescent
by Jessica Anthony
McSweeney’s 2009

I haven’t read this book yet, but it’s high on the queue, in the top five. The fact that it’s a McSweeney’s book helps, though the main reason it jumped to such a high position, surpassing a few other McS books, is because of the cover. It looks like the visual equivalent of what could be a Bjork lyric: His veins / are a tiny city. It sounds funnier if you sing it out loud in a poor Icelandic accent. However, based on the novel’s premise–the tale of a man who sells meat out of a bus in rural Virginia–the book itself might best be read aloud with Hungarian inflections.