Favourite book covers

http://www.strangesisters.com/

great collection of lesbian pulp fiction paperback covers

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0812567102.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Makes me wonder if Wuthering Height is the canonized book to have the highest percentage of really terrible covers.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/2264019182.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

http://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/Cover/Y1574.jpg

The book itself I couldn't get through.

In part, because they keep messing with book covers. For me, there's only one true cover of this book:

http://www3.cerritos.edu/fquaas/graphics/catcher.gif

...and it's iconic -- at least for me. But that's just the edition that was around when I was growing up; I've talked to other people who thought other editions were the iconic edition and mine was some johnny-come-lately.

(Another book that I'm not at all fond of. Maybe I'll need to find some that I actually like.)

http://www.granarybooks.com/books/clay/cover.jpg

The book's cover is not bad but inside it has replicas of all sorts of fantistic "lo fi" book covers.

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00008NUX2.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

As an aside and being a sucker for free advertising, I should point out (as the girlfriend who works for Mitchell Beazley) we do also have some other splendid titles of a similar ilk - Magazine Covers, Front Cover, Album covers and Hip Hop Cover Art (with the rather splendid if slightly incomprehensible quote from Eminem "This book is like a walk down hip hop memory lane. Brings back memories of myself coming up." If anyone can explain quite what that means, we'd be grateful ...)

http://peacecorpsonline.org/messages/jpeg/mating.jpg

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1573222135.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

As far as covers go, I've bought books for that reason only, especially in England. I have a paperback of Virginia Woolf's short stories that comes to mind--a vase of flowers on a table in an empty hallway--got to dig that out and read some of those stories again. Much more accessible than her novels.

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0375507507.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

http://www.goreyography.com/west/paper/paper01.htm

or these:
http://posters.barnesandnoble.com/collection.asp?userid=eu15Ex0ATv&PID=61004

or these:
http://posters.barnesandnoble.com/collection.asp?userid=eu15Ex0ATv&PID=61009

Sorry, trial and error here.

They still won't give me a job though, the fuckers.

Funny, that Ariel cover that nobody likes is a good seller in our shop. I can usually price that cover a euro or even two higher than other copies of the same book and have it sell quite comfortably. I think it has art student appeal.

One of our meeting rooms (I work in a library) has posters of some "iconic" Penguin covers, mostly 50s and 60s - not sure if I'd recognise many of them as the definitive cover personally, and I don't think any of the ones I've read came in the same cover, but the posters are pretty great, I like that meeting room.

(posters are from these guys, according to the note I wrote in a previous meeting. I must've been concentrating really hard, as I jotted down that URL and "brodie/huxley/catcher/brighton rock/WOTW", compared to 6 words on the actual meeting)

http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n30/n154152.jpg

I think of this as totally iconic:
http://www.philipkdick.com/covers/dadoesbr.jpg

and was surprised to learn it wasn't the original US cover, which I guess disqualifies it from real icon status. That is the UK first edition, though.

I am tempted to get this poster of Fontana covers
http://8.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kvt2kapqni1qz7nxjo1_500.jpg

not sure if I'd recognise many of them as the definitive cover personally

Me too, but wow, that Shakespeare one is deeply evocative of school for me xps

Notice that Pound doesn't get one of the more swastikarish ones, but Trotsky does xp

that one of the fish telling secrets made me lol irl for some reason.

xp: that gaddis book cover freaked me the eff out when I saw it and I couldn't stop looking at it for days after it was in my possession. Now it's so familiar I think I'll go through a little mourning period when it leaves my bed side table.

Also lol Nietzsche xp

I wish I had that edition of The Recognitions. I have the black Penguin Classics one which I like less.

Notice that Pound doesn't get one of the more swastikarish ones, but Trotsky does xp

Comrade Vyshinsky has exposed the traitor Trotsky's villainous ties with the Hitlerite power in open court! Long live Stalin! Long live Yezhov Beria!

Marcuse, Laing, Reich, Fanon, Gramsci... very much of its time.

Love that Gaddis. I saw it just after I finished reading my library's copy (they have the pink one) so I didn't bother but I really should have.

Covers of Lanark

i really dislike book covers with inset pictures, especially ones where the aspect ratio of the picture is opposite from the book (sideways rather than tall). i wish the paperback 'against the day' were designed like the hardcover.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61ETZX3MAHL.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVaa1wLU4AAwZSw.jpg

him sad

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/B017Y39XB2.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
him not

I had to collect more of that company's output: the best (of many, many awful covers); http://causticcovercritic.blogspot.com.au/2015/12/monkeys-throwing-faeces.html

First one is more like The Bros Karamazov, amirite?

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41oJvLdChAL._SX311_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

classic tale of life in the trenches

haha oh man i'm enjoying your blog, James

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_hvV0JHPYX_I/SoUAgIJnbgI/AAAAAAAAF9w/3pduBgcpkA8/s400/wizard+oz.jpg

:) thanks

Love that blog as well, just lolled at Thomas Hardy series.

They are quite astonishing

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/47/AmericanPsychoBook.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/33/TheThreeStigmataOfPalmerEldritch(1stEd).jpg

There are some interesting soviet book covers here http://www.openculture.com/2016/01/download-650-soviet-book-covers-many-sporting-wonderful-avant-garde-designs-1917-1942.html

Actually, maybe this link is better http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/01/07/russian-book-jackets-from-the-1930s/

Wow--thanks for the link, some beautiful things there

Yeah, some cool stuff. Maybe too much to look through...

oh, this saved me having to start a new thread, thanks Jerry

can't decide whether this is good or bad
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51Meylr9rEL._SY346_.jpg

(penguin edition of The Honourable Schoolboy in case that disappears)

Wish le Carre had called a book 'A Gripping Plot of Devilish Complexity'

Just on a functional level, it's bad not good

it’s terrible

it's one of a set and they hark back to graphic designs of some earlier versions, which pleases me.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/series/smiley/the-smiley-collection.html

(one of these things is not like the others... in fact there's a whole nother series with those pale blue covers, identical apart from the book name)

(penguin website run by penguins judging by the speed of it)