Banned Books discussion

I was looking at some of my books and started to wonder about something.

Some of my books, including some classics, have either strange/creepy titles or covers. For example, my copy of Gone With the Wind sort of looks like a silly romance novel cover.

Does you have any experiences where someone looked at the title/cover of your book and reacted strangely?

OK, at the very real risk of offending someone (apologies in advance) isn't Gone With the Wind really a stereotypical romance? Didn't it kind of establish the genre?

To answer your question, most science fiction books up until really recently had covers that did not in the least reflect their contents. It still happens just not as much. Basically they were trying to appeal to men and often had scantily clad women on the cover or big spaceships or a woman being protected by a man, even if those weren't prominent themes in the book at all. So yes, I've had it happen to me frequently.

Repackaging adult or classic lit for the YA group produces some weird stuff. There was an old version of Ender's Game which was totally a tron rip off.

I think that was a huge concern of mine, I spoke around to people about the cover, and many people have picked up books just based on the cover and then not liked the content and visa versa, picked up awful covers and loved the content. It is hard to tell what people are going to do, but, a cover can give off a first impression and then a decision follows after that, to flip it and read the back or just move on. If there is any doubts in whether you really like it, I would say those doubts may be coming up for a reason, I know cover art can be one of the most expensive things for the book, but, think about eventually changing it if you are not happy. I looked at the cover and don't find it to be a deal breaker for the book though. Do you think mine is okay?

I'm sorry, J.L., I haven't read your book so I cannot comment.

An interesting cover will get me to pick up a book by an unknown (to me) author and read the summary.

A great cover will definitly draw me in. I buy many books I've never heard of simpy because the art or title caught my eye. But I buy just as many that don't. A bad cover or title alone isn't going to put me off.

I published my own book and spent HOURS on the cover. Oddly, I never judge a book by its cover. I read the first page and instantly know if I want to read it or not. So I've never understood the cover fixation--maybe they work on the subconscious? In other news. I have gotten another good review for my book by Maria Savva, a reviewer here and at Bookpleasures. I'd love it if a few of you 'added' my book. Thanks, Mark
Review: http://goo.gl/nGsZE
To add: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10...

Mark wrote: "I published my own book and spent HOURS on the cover. Oddly, I never judge a book by its cover. I read the first page and instantly know if I want to read it or not. So I've never understood the co..."

Mark, your book sounds fascinating. I love languages and although I really do not need to add any more books to my teeming to-read shelf, I have added yours. Now I just need to find a copy.

Good/interesting cover work will get me to pick up a book I normally would have passed over. Typically that would be for an author I had never heard of. For example, I picked up Josh Bazell's Beat The Reaper based on the blue and white "screaming" cover.

Sometimes I will read stuff beacause I like the title. For example, Matt Ruff's Sewer, Gas, Electric; The Public Works Trilogy or Toby Young's How to lose friends and alienate people.

I think that sometimes covers actually accentuate the "controversy" (the the supposed controversy). I many cases, I think that it is the publisher, and especially with children's and young adult books, you really wonder. Case in point, Judy Blume's Forever.

The copy I read when I was a teenager (which I don't have anymore, unfortunately) had a locket on the cover, which signifies (to me) that the story is mostly about love and the relationship between the two teenagers.



The book I got from Amazon a few years ago, features two sets of legs (girl and boy) lying on a bed. Silly and not a good cover choice, in my opinion, as that cover seems to indicate, to say that the book is primarily about sex (which it is NOT) and in some ways might even somehow justify those unenlightened individuals who want the book censored and/or banned.

Dutch wrote: "There is an edition of Lolita showing off a pair of awkward little legs with socks and buckle shoes. I hated this cover so much. Dolores was 12, but if people really thought about it,..."

The publishers may have been trying to compensate for the widespread misconceptions about the novel and the relationship between the protagonists caused by the two movie adaptations. Sue Lyons was 14 when cast and 15 during most of the filming, but she was chosen in part because her highly developed figure suggested an older girl and a different sort of relationship than that in the book. 16 year old Dominique Swain was somewhat less curvy, but again she clearly did not look twelve; thus the relationship was very different and perhaps less disturbing than the one in the book. In addition, the difference in scope between a novel and a film changed the relationship. The book had enough space to make clear the interplay between Humbert, who clearly was a predator long before he met Lolita and would have had pretty much the same approach toward her even if she had never encouraged him, and Lolita, who was a willing temptress determined to make use of Humbert's proclivities for her own purposes. The films had less room to explore these psychological angles. I am less familiar with the second one, but in the Kubrick version Ms. Lyons's flirtations made Humbert's responses seem more natural and less perverse thanthey were in the book.

My teenage sister immediately and proudly proclaims that her entire basis for choosing a book is based on the cover. I think younger people judge more on the cover, whereas someone older might have learned that approach doesnt always work out so well. So she might grab something with cupcakes (i'm not being stereotypical, she loves covers with cute food on them) while I would read the first page or two. If the writing is bad, I'll pass. She doesnt even notice if the writing is bad.

I also notice that covers follow trends. In recent years, the trend is to show a photo of a real person (ex. the Judy Blume book shown above). I've noticed a lot of 'classic' books getting re-covered with photos on the front instead of illustrations. Even children's dog books (Red Fern, old Yeller) now have real people and spooky looking covers instead of focusing on the boy's love for his dog. That said, I have an older friend who won't even pick up a book with a photo cover. She says they all look cheesy.

Where the Red Fern Grows
Where the Red Fern Grows

Re: what Lena said about photo covers

I despise photo covers. I don't *absolutely* avoid a book only because it has a photo cover, however if given the choice between, say, two books where one has a photo cover and one doesn't, I will *always* choose the one without. Likewise, I will go out of my way to track down an old, used copy of a book without a photo cover rather than buy a shiny new copy if all that's available are photo covers. Or I'll hang onto a really badly copyedited ARC without any picture at all rather than replace it with a real copy that has a photo cover even if I adored the book. I *despise* them so so so much.

I have seen almost none that I didn't think were ugly and I find that more often than with drawn or painted or otherwise constructed illustrations, photo covers are almost always more inaccurate to the author's descriptions (wrong race, wrong time period details, just seems like random stock art that is totally unrelated to the book entirely, etc.). They just feel lazier and cheaper to me - more unfair to the author most of the time.

So yes, I am more likely to avoid a book if it's got a photo cover even if I know I'm likely to like it. Even if I loved the first book, I may not read the sequel simply because it has a photo cover and I'm holding out for a printing without if I'm not *dying* to read it.

Photo covers make me think the book is more of a grocery store book rather than good literature.

I think covers do work on the subconscious but there is definitely an attraction to the cover. If you were to into a large bookstore like Barnes and Noble, for example, and wanted a good mystery novel, you have several hundred to choose from. There's no way you could pick up every single one and figure out if it's something you might like. If you want to explore a new author, you gravitate towards the ones the bookstore has put front-forward so you notice them and can see the covers. In a used bookstore, they usually don't even do that so you have to pull the books out one by one. You don't have time to read the backs of every single one so either you only touch on a few or you're judging a book by its cover.

Science fiction is really bad about book covers. I recently came across this cover:

Elegy Beach

The description begins with:
"Ariel, a tough-talking unicorn, and her best friend, Peter Garey, reunite in this sporadically charming sequel to 1983's Ariel." The novel is post-apocalyptic and has dark moments but the reviews say there are unicorns on almost every page. Does this cover make sense?

More frequently, sf books put "big buxom babes" or obscenely large mercenary types on the cover of a book that has very little to do with either. But still, I am less likely to pick up either of those over one that has an abstract or simple cover.

What about the spine of the book? When you are hunting the racks at a library or book store, I usually have my head studiously bent to one side to read all the titles, periodically pull one out, and read a little bit. There isn't too much to judge with book spines, so I just pick random books every so often. Sometimes the coolest sounding titles end up being really cheesy, but I doubt that is a sound theory!

Sometimes I end up picking out too many books that my backpack or whatever fabric/canvas carrier I'm holding cannot take it, so I always make sure to bring pen and paper: not only writing down name and title, but making a note on what the spine somewhat looks like ^^

Kelly wrote:
Science fiction is really bad about book covers.

Oh really... http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/

LOL>>>

It says something about SF book covers in that I didn't understand why most of them were bad: these were totally normal for the genre. They at least related to the subject matter! :)

yes, I was reading Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughter House Five" and someone thought it was a gory crime book.

Here's a question that is somewhat similar - how about books whose blurbs on the back have nothing to do with what they're actually about? I can't think off the top of my head which ones I've seen that have been like that, but if it weren't for reviews, I'd have never read the book.