Willful Creatures

When Photoshop goes bad...

And it's a minor point, but the treatment of the title is just way too common. That rectangle with the circular-cut corners is just *everywhere*.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

I am of the opinion that less is almost always more. This cover would be so much stronger if only one of the two main graphic (non-text) elements disappeared. My vote would be to eliminate the woman at the top, although you *would* be left with just the cherry blossoms, which seem either trite or obvious.

Here's another example: Death of an Ordinary Man.

I'm sure there are many others.

Hey Nostradamus!

This isn't from the NY Times Sunday Book review. Not much there this week.

I bought this Coupland novel earlier in the week. Coupland designed the cover, which he's also done for other books. (I'll post those after I visit the bookstore and do some more checking.)

I'm not quite sure what I think about this cover -- feel free to tell me what *you* think -- but I do want to ask a question: Who else designs their own covers?

Coupland is a busy guy -- check out what he's up to at http://www.coupland.com.

And this is forthcoming from Coupland

Betcha he did this cover too.

The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil

I am in love with this cover.

Tooth and Claw

Can't make up my mind about this one. I almost want this to be more minimalist, less contrast-y, etc.

Abducted

It's too bad this isn't coming out until October, because I can't think of a better beach read.

My immediate reaction to this cover was that it was too predictable, but I've changed my mind. I'm not an alien or UFO freak, but I do know that the issue of why "abductees" always describe aliens in almost exactly the same way produces two opinions:

1) Abduction must be real: why else would everybody describe the same thing?

2) Abduction isn't real, and the fact that people describe the same thing is merely a cultural production. See X-Files, Close Encounters, etc.

Either way, because I'm guessing that the two questions above are discussed in this book, the archetypal alien works.

Hello Readers

Just a quick note regarding the images on this site.

Some of you visit often and may have noticed that the images are smaller than they used to be. (Click on one of the archive links on the right from a month or two ago to see what I mean.)

Blogger now allows all users to upload photos (one used to have to pay), and they've therefore put a limit on how big uploaded images can be. Unless I can find a hack, what you see below is the new Blogger "Large." We'll just have to look harder :-)

Thanks for stopping by, and keep the comments coming!

UPDATE: Just click on an image and you'll see it at "regular" size.

Snow White and Russian Red

I like this illustration. (Reviewed in the Village Voice, not the Times.)

The Testing of Luther Albright

For those of you who weren't too crazy about "A Novel" appearing in the stem of a mushroom (see here), that might be better than "A Novel" sticking out of someone's neck: