Historical fiction cover

Dee Brown, Creek Mary's Blood. 

At first glance, it's a fairly innocuous cover that tells you it's about Native Americans, set in the past. 

But there's a bit more to be read from the cover. Native Americans in the American past are often located in the popular narrative of the 'olden days' of the 'wild west' - and often as bit players. The cover places the Native Americans front and centre.  The fact it's an old photo also shows the story is set not too long ago (ie, recent enough that cameras were around, which - for me - pushes it out of some long-distant mythical Wild West era and closer to a time within living memory. 

The tipis indicate also that the story features the Plains peoples (who use tipis). And the title of course place a female character front and centre. While my initial thoughts are that the cover doesn't really show the scope of the story within, it still shows a whole lot. 

This was a required text for a university course. I didn't get into it in one go. I read/skimmed the first lot of required pages (some small number like 20 pages or something) dutifully and stopped - which is significant because usually, once I start reading, I don't stop. 

Then, when the next lot of required was due, my heart sank. It was 180-odd pages. But to my surprise, I powered through them and kept going through to the end. I ignored my other required readings with a clear conscience, telling myself virtuously that I was getting ahead on this text. 

A well-told story. 

Pulitzer Prize book cover

Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies. 

Lest I give the impression I only ever read 'light' or 'fluffy' books, this is a collection of short stories which offer snapshots of the human experience, through the lens of the Indian diaspora. 

Touching, heartbreaking, despairing and profoundly sweet in turns, the stories are told with a kind of clinical compassion. You can reach in and feel the helplessness, the ennui or the bleakness of the characters' lives. Or you can see the happiness of lives lived between the words. 

 I return to my favourites more than others. The final story in particular - of a life well-lived - is at once ordinary, uplifting and beautiful. 

Chick Lit cover #4

Alison Sherlock, The Desperate Bride's Diet Club. 

I did my usual with this book. Picked it up because of the cover illustration, rolled my eyes at the title and skimmed a couple of random pages and put it down.  It stayed with me so I went back a couple of days later and reconsidered. 

I did like it. The characters stayed with me and I thought they were nicely drawn out. The dieting guru was a real witch ( I need to practise writing out my own witchy characters, and she's a good model to start with!) 

But I didn't think the bad guy's comeuppance was great. It was a very obvious climactic scene, but there wasn't enough seeing him hoisted with his own petard. We see all the excruciating moments that the heroine goes through kinda at the hands of the bad guy. And sometimes I just want payback (even though - I know, I know! - the heroine always has to rise above such pettiness. But still...)

Definitely has re-read value. 

Vroom with a View cover

Peter Moore, Vroom with a View

How absolutely gorgeous is this cover? Love, love, love this style of illustration. 

It helps enormously of course that Peter Moore's writing is witty, lighthearted and delightful to read. 

He calls his Vespa 'Sophia'. Of course. 

Chuck Amuck Cover

Chuck Jones, The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist. 

Who doesn't love Chuck Jones' creations?? Even in Dodo-Land, I was able to grow up with Merry Melodies and all the gang. 

There's so much to look at in this cover:

- the cool b&w outlines of the buildings. 

- Daffy in his predicament (with his quintessentially Daffy reactions) but in that well-known surreal cene which also plays with the 'gap' between viewer and creator. 

- I'm surprised how I can still recognise all the characters in silhouette!!

Time for a re-read, I think...

Agatha Raisin cover

Agatha Raisin series, written by M. C. Beaton. 

This series has been re-released with this light, illustration-based style of cover. I like it, of course. 

The books are good fun in that flippant whodunit style. Although I have to say that M. C. Beaton has an absolutely scathing way of describing some characters. Painfully merciless. 

I was a bit of a fan of the Hamish MacBeth TV show, based on her other well-known book series, which I've not had the chance to read. But I read recently that Beaton is NOT a fan of the show. In the books, Hamish MacBeth is a apparently a burly chap. In the TV show, he's a skinny pot-smoker (as played by Robert Carlyle). 

Fair enough, I'd be annoyed too, if someone messed with my character from my imagination that much. 

I wonder how they'd go bringing Agatha Raisin to life??

Notebook Cover

I love stationery! 

Show me someone who doesn't like/ can't appreciate stationery, and I show you my enemy. 

I especially love notebooks - new, blank, pristine - and ready to become a treasure chest filled with a universe of ideas. 

There is a ridiculous side-effect though: the prettier/groovier the cover, the greater my expectation that the content I will fill it with is special and worthwhile - content that is worthy of the cover. 

This notebook is now a couple of years old. But that's nothing for me. I once held on to 2 special notebooks I received as a child for 17 years total before I found a deserving use for them!

This one will probably be hanging around a good while yet. 

Chick Lit cover #3

Julie Ortolon, Almost Perfect. Signet Eclipse. 

Oooh. It's quite similar to Chick Lit Cover #2, isn't it?? I'd not noticed that before. 

I wonder if the whole lighthearted-illustration-of-delicate-female-legs-minus-torsos-or-faces on covers will become a recurring stylistic thing.

Something to watch out for...

Waikiki Cover

The Waikikis: Greatest Hits from Hawai'i

The best bargain bin find ever! 

Delightfully seventies vibe to this cover - especially those little flowers. 

And great sounds too!

The Stitch in Time Series cover

In the previous post, I talked about the book, Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle.

When I re-encountered the book in a secondhand bookshop in the Blue Mountains, I was surprised to find out there were a couple more, and that they were part of a series. 

I grabbed the 3 other books in the series with covers in similarly-styled illustrations, all of which looked very new. The bookshop owner told me they were part of a box set; the owner said he hadn't included the box because the series was missing book 1. He offered me the box and I accepted with alacrity. 

The box itself is the feature for this post. It is its own thing of beauty with beautiful illustrations. 

This is what you see on either side of the box. Did any illustration depict story-telling more beautifully??

You've got ghosts, fantasy, space, the exciting and the unknown... Perfection!!
 

My 4 books from the Stitch in Time Series (minus book 1), by Madeleine L'Engle. 

The stories await their telling...

Many Waters Cover

Madeleine L'Engle, Many Waters. Square Fish. 

It's amazing when a cover can throw in all the crucial elements of the story. And I love the illustration style. 

I first encountered this book when I was a teenager. It was not my normal reading choice at all. I was in my Agatha Christie phase, I think. But I was sick at home and my dad was going to the library and I asked him (fretfully and in the self-pitying way one has when one is sick) to find some interesting books for me. 

Many Waters was one of them. I remember looking at it dubiously. The library book cover was a beige-yellow and had a couple of ribbons of blue. Not my kind of book at all. 

But I was sick, bored and started reading it reluctantly - and got totally suckered in. Twins who travel back in time to just before the time of Noah's Ark and the flood - a time when angels, seraphim and nephilim, walked among people. A beautiful, layered and complex story. 

I never forgot the story or the title and was very excited when I found it looking glossy and new in a second-hand bookshop. 

But there's a bit more to the story. Cut through to the next post. 

Smashing Clashing Album Cover

The Clash: Combat Rock. 

Awesome album! And iconic cover to match. 

So the story goes, this photo was just taken as a snapshot while the members of The Clash were holidaying in Asia (Thailand, I think). And the holiday snap became the album cover. 

I'm not sure - even if you tried to take a similar photo today in a similar setting - that the mix of: flippant pose, lost-in-his-own-thoughts, orthodox pose, distracted reaction, would come out the same. There's a lot more glossy/idealised self-representation in Selfie-World now. It would make for an interesting experiment...

Chick Lit Cover #2

Lucy Finn, If Wishing Made it So. Signet Eclipse. 

Hoooo dear! I think I'll find that I've for quite a sizable collection of books with these sorts of illustrations. 

I enjoyed the book; I remember there were a couple of hanging-disbelief-out-to-dry-to-ensure-it-stayed-suspended scenes. One was the heroine-sleeping-through-the-impending-hurricane-build-up-so-she-could-be-rescued-by-her-love-interest-and-they-then-have-um-"alone"-time. In the lighthouse. 

But I quibble. It's fun, entertaining and filled with sly humour. 

And I likelikelike the beachey illustration. 

Tintin

Michael Farr, The Adventures of Hergé: Creator of Tintin. John Murray. 

Not a Tintin comic cover - I don't think I have any here at my disposal, unfortunately. 

This is a clever cover. Three black and white photographs of Hergé caught in (animated) mid-conversation sit side-by-side in cartoon panel style. Meanwhile at the bottom, bright colourful cartoons of Tintin and Snowy (or Milou, as he was called in French) race the reader to turn the page.

Fashion Illustration Cover

Noel Chapman and Judith Cheek, A complete guide to design and illustration styles: Creative a Fashion Drawing. hinkler. 

I love this style of drawing! When I was a teenager, I spent a a lot of time trying to copy this style of drawing (and getting frustrated when it repeatedly didn't come out as a carbon copy of the original!)

Pencil on paper has never looked so amazing!

Travelling Matchmaker Cover

M. C. Beaton, Belinda Goes to Bath (The Travelling Matchmaker Series). Robinson. 

I love this line-and-wash style of illustration. It always draw my eye and I'll always look at this style of cover twice. 

It helps that I've read some of M. C. Beaton's Agatha Raisin series, and I know of her Hamish Macbeth series. Beaton can be quite withering in her descriptions of people, but I vaguely remember her being more gentle with her protagonist in this book - especially at the end of the story. 

A Steampunk Cover

Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal:The Detective. Headline. 

Not my normal choice. The only reason I picked it up at all only was because of the striking tri-colour scheme. I haven't always enjoyed steampunk and I picked it up in spite of the steampunk promise. 

And I'm very glad I did. 

Brilliantly written and viciously sharply observed, the pages are encrusted with caustic wit. You can find a deliciously dry piece of description on every single page. 

Page 85: "Cabal dislike him instinctively, having identified him as a man still prey to his hormones while his intellect puttered around in the background like an embarrassed parent". 

Another page at random: page 264: "Cabal was growing irritated, too. He had been planing his grand entrance for the past few hours, and people kept chattering instead of letting him get on with it". 

Girly / Chick Lit cover #1

Victoria Connelly: A Weekend with Mr Darcy. Avon. 

I'm a sucker for this sort of cover illustration. Light and girlish - the sort of book I can whip through in an afternoon. 

Throw in a Pride and Prejudice (P&P) reference and I'm sold!

Although, having said this, I wasn't initially sold. I remember the first time I encountered it. I'd recently been burned by a couple of Chick Lit* books - where annoying people either don't get their come-uppance, or they get brushed aside (after pages and pages earlier on of experiencing their irritating behaviours in full glory), or there are too many TSTL** moments to further the plot. 

I was killing time in a department store, enjoyed the first few chapters, but couldn't trust myself to get a copy. I do this from time to time actually if I'm not sure. I go away and if the book stays with me, I feel annoyed with myself for not getting a copy, and I go back and get it. Except of course when I did go back, this book was no longer there!

So when I had a chance encounter with it a couple of years later, I grabbed it with comical alacrity. 

* I'm not up to date with the to-ing and fro-ing about whether Chick Lit is an "appropriate" term. I just use it to describe the light-hearted, fluffy, cup-of-tea-treat of book I enjoy reading from time to time. 

**Too Stupid To Live

February Theme

Picture if you will, a harried female character, who: 

- has slept in because she forgot her alarm;

- looks completely dishevelled, with tangled hair skewing in all directions, with smudged eye make-up that only seves to highlight her popping eyes, and with mismatched clothes (pin-striped pants with plaid jacket anyone?) that are wrongly buttoned; 

- is trying to run helplessly for a bus she has no chance of catching, with coat anchored only through one arm as the rest flaps behind uselessly;

- then breaks a heel. 

Cut to her racing through the doors of her office frantic, saucer-eyed, and sucking in great gulps of air; each in-breath is accompanied by an involuntarily loud screech that skewers up an atonal scale and sends shivers down the spines of any unfortunates within hearing distance.  

Then her briefcase bursts open. Her weekly supply of lunchtime tins of tuna spill out. 

And that is how I have raced to my blog now to bring it up to date. 

I could have chosen to pretend the delay has been on purpose and that I'm not ruffled by my delay at all. But where's the fun and drama in that?

Ahem, and on to the formal announcement. 

My February theme is "covers". 

Book covers, record covers, DVD covers and why I like them. Or maybe, why they bug me. No logic or rhyme or reason or reference (or deference) to popular opinion, if any. Just my opinion. 

I might extend my focus to other pop culture items; I'll see how I go. 

I'll be sticking to items I have or that I own rather than include externally-sourced covers. 

Ok. 

Regains breath, smooths hair into acceptably tidy, if windswept and sporty, bun. Straightens mid-matched clothing with a brisk tug. 

Let's get rolling, shall we?!