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Sunday, February 26, 2006

Death's Door

I don't often do this, but sometimes a cover seems so lacking to me while the illustration in the Book Review strikes me as so much better. The Times image is by Ray Bartkus.



3 comments:

Kitty said...

I really like the first cover. I understand it. The second cover is too gimmicky for me.

Anonymous said...

I have to say that I hate the original cover. It looks like a small university press edition (one of those ones with bad margins and too-heavy a stock), and the fonts are dry and uninspired. The whole banding thing is a letdown visually as well.

For the content, I'm not sure that the NYT illustration works (it could be construed as too tongue-in-skull and lightweight in tone), but as a visual it certainly wouldl grab my attention more than the actual cover.

Joseph said...

It does look like a small press, but it's Norton. And maybe I underestimated the academic nature of the book: "Gilbert parses the poetry of Plath, Lawrence, Tennyson, and Rossetti, among others."

Tongue-in-skull? Ha! :-)

The illustration from the Times probably isn't appropriate for a book that "parses Plath."