Post your favorite cover

[misterlit]

Is there a book cover that you just really like a whole lot? Than post it here!

I don't really like many of my covers but the Barnes & Noble Dorain Gray Classic is neat:http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41QV1CH6Q4L.jpg

[Charles Darnay]

Yes, Dorian Gray! I love that cover.

Continuing along the Barnes & Noble lines;

[johann cruyff]

For some reason, I feel this cover captures the essence of the novel well:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2392/2461291275_e58b6d9fb8.jpg

[stlukesguild]

The only problem with the Wilde cover is that it's a portrait of Franz Liszt not of Dorian Gray.:confused:

[stlukesguild]

oops...

[keilj]

http://home.att.net/~keil.j/tar.jpg

[keilj]

http://home.att.net/~keil.j/notes.jpg

[keilj]

http://home.att.net/~keil.j/sales.jpg

[LitNetIsGreat]

Yes, I'm not really satisfied with any of my copies of Dorian Gray (and I have four). In fact more often than not I am unsatisfied with a lot of the cover art, take this one for example:

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/ciu/27/4a/0ef6c27a02a0b4ff22176110.L.jpg

That's just somebody sat on a fence? (Over Here by Julian Rossi Ashton.)

Or:

http://rgr-static1.tangentlabs.co.uk/images/bau/97801414/9780141439594/0/0/plain/tess-of-the-durbervilles.jpg

Even if it is a Millais.

I quite like my Keats though:

http://www.penguin.com.au/covers-jpg/9780140422108.jpg

It immediately brings to mind the wonderful poem "To Autumn".

Probably though, I like my copy of The Divine Comedy best:

http://simania.co.il/bookimages/covers21/219128.jpg

The little mosaics are good on that one too, though you can't see that well on the image.

[keilj]

for some reason I like the one sitting on a fence

[The Comedian]

A book by Edward Abbey (awesome) + a cover by R. Crumb (awesome) = awesome awesome.

http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/files/storyphotos/Monkey_Wrench_Gang.jpg

[Desolation]

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c369/frankendoll/Books/BasicNietzsche.jpg

I love it because I can actually connect the image used with the book's contents, which is pretty rare for these kind of books.

[dfloyd]

I grew up during wwii, and at one time I had all the Tarzan books. However, the paper wasn't acid proof and they literally disintegrated over the years. About 10 years ago,Easton Press issued six leather bound Tarzan books with the frontispiece being a replication of the original dust cover. I just reread Tarzan and the Jewls of Opar. Burroughs had a great commamd of English vocabulary, and it is hard for me to believe I read and understood these books whn I wa 8 or 9 years old.

[eyemaker]

A random selection from my shelf.

[blp]

Always liked this one for Naked Lunch:

http://realitystudio.org/images/covers/naked_lunch/naked_lunch.uk.calder.1964.jpg

It's a general beef of mine, though. Most book jackets are a giant wasted opportunity for good design. Actually, it occurs to me, I say this with a small professional interest. I once had a placement through the dole commissioning book jackets at a publishers. Below is a link to the one I'm proudest of. The designer didn't know what to do with it, especially since the only images we had were low quality. I said: go constructivist; use cutouts and strong diagonals. And we ended up with this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Film-Propaganda-Soviet-Germany-Society/dp/1860641679/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1265941350&sr=8-2-fkmr1 Not bad, I thought. Too bad the book only gets one star on Amazon.co.uk. Poor little unloved book.

[blp]

Penguin books, from the time of Johan Cruiff's suggestion, used to be bloody great though.

Now here's an absolutely deathless classic:
http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/clockwork_cover.jpg

[blp]

The old Graham Green Penguins with the simple ink drawings were nearly always good:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2270/2308442977_a79723143e.jpg?v=0

Google's not turning many up, sadly.

[keilj]

I grew up during wwii, and at one time I had all the Tarzan books. However, the paper wasn't acid proof and they literally disintegrated over the years. About 10 years ago,Easton Press issued six leather bound Tarzan books with the frontispiece being a replication of the original dust cover. I just reread Tarzan and the Jewls of Opar. Burroughs had a great commamd of English vocabulary, and it is hard for me to believe I read and understood these books whn I wa 8 or 9 years old.

I love the Tarzan books. Love the alternative animal names (tantor, mangani). Love what Burroughs essentially had to say about man/nature/masculinity. Love the occasional use of a noun as a verb "We lair here tonight"


here's one more for the road:

http://home.att.net/~keil.j/tarzneal.jpg

[blp]

Couple of versions of this one, both good...

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/ga/ul/154007870041/inlineimg/Y/fear_and_loathing_in_las_vegas.jpg http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0586081321.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

[blp]

Here's a fantastic page of numerous brilliant Pelican covers from the seventies (http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/pelican-books/6#i253). Such as these:

http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/pelican-books/254-1.jpg http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/pelican-books/285-1.jpg http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/pelican-books/258-1.jpg http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/pelican-books/162-1.jpg

And not this one, but it's in the same vein:
http://pics.librarything.com/picsizes/d6/c1/d6c18e6af2fb587597930525351434d414f4541.jpg

[stlukesguild]

I quite like my Keats though...

Yes... they are doing a far better job with covers than in the past. A perfect choice: an early visionary landscape painting by Samuel Palmer, a follower of William Blake.

[stlukesguild]

The Edward Abbey and the William Burroughs covers are absolutely brilliant!

[stlukesguild]

At this point a great many of the most important books within my library are in hardback... with rather plain, albeit tasteful, covers. Scanning around the shelves I did find these:

A facsimile of Blake's original:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4019/4349931031_019101ba8d_o.jpg

Maldoror, the prose/poem cited as one of the precursors of Surrealism:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4035/4350677494_4896c60632_o.jpg

A collection of poetry by the Mexican poet, Homero Arijis:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4044/4349931313_3a39a0bb52_o.jpg

The original cover to a work of Spanish literary eroticism:drool5::blush::

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2797/4350677596_2b1a3d4238_o.jpg

One of my favorites... and I'm noticing that the best covers among the books I own tend to be of photographic images rather than art:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4066/4349931331_8264beed53_o.jpg

Building upon this theme of photography I love these two covers of books by the photographer Abelardo Morell:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2735/4350677346_f6a0554bc1_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2746/4350677380_cb7edc34de_o.jpg

I saw the exhibition of the actual photographs of Morell's A Book of Books, which could not but appeal to the bibliophile with the artist's unexpected views of books:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2757/4349958719_c717fc8572_o.jpg

Morell was profoundly inspired by Borges as was the French print-maker, Erik Desmazieres, who illustrated this marvelous book...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4048/4349931259_b73f5a7b8d_o.jpg

The illustrations inside are even more magical than the cover... and suggestive of Borges' world of endless libraries.

Another marvelous book... inside and out... in art and text... is my Anotated Alice:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4051/4350677456_647e9940ea_o.jpg

[billl]

I have very few books now, because of some moves, but I do happen to have this one that is maybe an interesting footnote to St. Luke's last post:

http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/x0/x4015.jpg

[sixsmith]

I actually prefer simple, definitive lettering:

http://mccoy.lib.siu.edu/illinois/images/humbgift.gif

Although I quite like these:

http://orgs.tamu-commerce.edu/rothsoc/sabbath.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/121/301230266_43c1784171.jpg

http://www.depersonalization.info/images/nausea.jpg

[LitNetIsGreat]

for some reason I like the one sitting on a fence

Really? I'm not that keen on it myself, it's far from the worst one I have though.


I quite like my Keats though...

Yes... they are doing a far better job with covers than in the past. A perfect choice: an early visionary landscape painting by Samuel Palmer, a follower of William Blake.

Oh right really? Yes I think they are improving with the newer editions, though they probably have more money available with them charging more. I love your selections incidentally - especially the Blake, the Babel and the cup on the table!

I'm not sure about the seventies ones or Comedian's Randy Gang thing though...

[blp]

I actually prefer simple, definitive lettering:


Me too. And I like it to feel integrated with the overall design. Too often now, lettering just looks as if it's been plonked on a photograph without much thought. I blame photoshop.

[blp]

I'm not sure about the seventies ones

Late modernist to the bone me. Slightly too late maybe. I sometimes think I'm trying to get back my childhood. Anyway, for whatever reason, to me those books are things of beauty, whereas more recent trends for patinated Victoriana, florid serif fonts, bits of lace etc. just look fussy, sentimental and fake to me.

[blp]

The painter Keith Farquhar did a series of paintings of those seventies covers, sans title, but with the titles of the books used as the titles of the paintings, underlining the arbitrariness of the connection between titles and abstract images (but really just reveling in the groovy designs of the abstractions in my view). It's true that there is almost no discernible reason for some of these images. You could swap the Laing one and the sociology one and it wouldn't make much difference. In fact, arguably, the sociology one, with its symmetrically split, slightly maddening design, is more appropriate for a book titled 'The Divided Self'.

[Silverblue]

this one, i saw the movie with Gene Tierney and i still have to buy the book, but i do love that old cover style. :)

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l103/precint13/leavehertoheavenn.jpg

[Katy North]

I know it sounds odd, but as far as covers go for me, I love the texture of the newish paperback book covers (I'm not sure what it's called)... the texture that usually ups the price of the book by 50% :sick: but that for some reason I really enjoy running my hands over when I'm thinking about reading the book.

I'm an odd duck who likes books as objects almost as much as she likes to read them... I don't think there's anything quite as comforting as being surrounded by books, and holding a book while reading a book.

That being said, I think the Barnes and Noble version of books is fantastic... not only are they nicely bound with relevant pictures on the cover, but they also have wonderful foodnotes and endnotes.

stlukesguild, I love the pictures of the covers in your post... they all make me want to read the books you have listed!

[jadrianne]

,,Dorian Gray" resembles a bit to Napoleon before he became an emperor ( or so I see it ):lol:

[stlukesguild]

All of them... excepting the Almudena Grandes... are certainly worth reading. The Ages of Lulu is just literary porno... but I was sold on the cover... and the cover blurbs.

[jadrianne]

The Ages of Lulu bares some resemblance in my opinion with Dona Isabel de Porcel painted by Goya .

[jadrianne]

But I don't know how to do that : it says in the bottom of the page that I can't post attachements . How I can do it? just drag the photo in the message?

[LitNetIsGreat]

Nay.

1 Find the image you want from the net and right click.
2 Select "copy image location".
3 In your message go to "insert image" above (that little button that looks like a postcard or something) under the undo button.
4 You then get a box coming up saying "enter the URL of your image" - just paste it in there.

If it is a photo I think that it has to have a proper location to be able to do it, I don't think you can just add your own photos from your personal documents.

[Veva]

http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n25/n127143.jpg

I love staring at this one :)

[stlukesguild]

To post an image you must first have stored it upon a photo hosting site such as Flickr or Photobucket. You simply cut the URL for the image you wish to post here and then click on the yellow square (photo posting) icon on the tool bar. Paste your URL after the http:// and press OK. Bingo! The URL will be posted to your post and you can check it with the "preview post" button beneath. Scheherazade can probably give you a more in depth step-by-step instructions if needed, but if you set up an account at a free photo-hosting site (Flickr, Photobucket, etc...) they should give you good instructions there. Direct linking to another website (outside of a photo-hosting site) is generally a no-no because it pulls band-width from that site.

[jadrianne]

I think I'll begin to search them .

[African_Love]

Books should not have covers (with art), especially sci-fi novels.

[Cailin]

Books should not have covers (with art), especially sci-fi novels.

Why not?

[jadrianne]

:svengo:I can't find good covers on the net .And I wanted so much to show you my own ( they are old basically some of them were my childhood friends but concerning new ones I can't find a big photo ). I was thinking of scanning them but ...........well I don't know if I can put them in here .:svengo:

[African_Love]

Why not?

I don't know, I just prefer the cover to be plain. Sci-fi covers tend to be corny.

[blp]

Sci-fi covers tend to be corny.

They do, but there are lots of exceptions.

http://www.sci-fi-o-rama.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/david_pelham_cats_cradle.png http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/io9/2009/11/1349544308_8668299a8f_b.jpg

The Space Merchants has had loads of covers, some corny, some tasteful. http://io9.com/5406778/the-space-merchants-gallery

Here's another great Vonnegut cover, showing how much can be done with lettering alone.

http://www.illiterarty.com/files/www.illiterarty.com/img/40/breakfast-of-champions.gif

[Maximilianus]

:svengo:I can't find good covers on the net .And I wanted so much to show you my own ( they are old basically some of them were my childhood friends but concerning new ones I can't find a big photo ). I was thinking of scanning them but ...........well I don't know if I can put them in here .:svengo:

You can upload the pictures on a free image hosting service, like Imageshack or Photobucket (you have to create an account on any of them first, for free of course). Once you have the scans uploaded, insert a link to the image on your post (when you're writing your post click on the insert image button, and paste the link in the dialog that shows up). Let me know if you have any doubt.

[blp]

Re posting images: Neely's way (page3) is simplest. No need to go through the rigmarole of uploading images to photobucket or similar if they're already on the net somewhere.

[SleepyWitch]

Here's a fantastic page of numerous brilliant Pelican covers from the seventies (http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/pelican-books/6#i253).

oh, wowie! I love that page, thanks for posting the link! now I wanna get all those old books about town planning, sociology, education !!!! :cryin: I'll end up spending lots of time and money trying to get hold of them..... and then they'll go on the shelf and I'll never read them anyway.

edit: just bought 5 of them on amazon for 1p each. blp, I love you! ;) I won't rest till I've bought all of them.

[blp]

edit: just bought 5 of them on amazon for 1p each. blp, I love you! ;) I won't rest till I've bought all of them.

Ha ha. Hooray! Yes, I was going to say, some of them are available for pennies on amazon. Was thinking about starting to collect them too. I found I had one really nice one on speed reading – Read Better, Read Faster – and I'm essentially using it as decoration now. It's propped up on the mantelpiece in my bedroom next to an old Penguin of RD Laing's The Politics of Experience.

Which ones did you get?

That is to say, this one:http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/pelican-books/302-1.jpg Mine's in slightly better nick.

[stlukesguild]

Re posting images: Neely's way (page3) is simplest. No need to go through the rigmarole of uploading images to photobucket or similar if they're already on the net somewhere.

Yes... but it can also be illegal when the image is taken from a site that is not designed to host images/videos such as Youtube, Photobucket, etc... It's called "hotlinking". Bandwidth theft or "hotlinking" is direct linking to a web site's files (images, video, etc.). An example would be using an <img> tag to display a JPEG image you found on someone else's web page so it will appear on your own site, weblog, forum message post, etc.

Bandwidth refers to the amount of data transferred from a web site to a user's computer. When you view a web page, you are using that site's bandwidth to display the files. Since web hosts charge based on the amount of data transferred, bandwidth is an issue. If a site is over its monthly bandwidth, it's billed for the extra data or taken offline.

A simple analogy for bandwidth theft: Imagine a random stranger plugging into your electrical outlets, using your electricity without your consent, and you paying for it. Host sites who discover the bandwidth theft have been known to replace the hotlinked image with pornographic images or images with nast, profanity-laden messages about theft. Hotlinking can also cause problems to the secondary site (ie. Litnet) for allowing such. Hosting images the legal way is easy and allows you to use a given image repeatedly... control and edit the scale of the image, etc... so I really don't see the problem.

[blp]

Thanks, stlukesguild. I knew nothing of any of this. All the images I posted here are, as you can probably guess, 'hotlinked'. If the mods want me to redo them via photobucket, I will.

[Travis_R]

http://bookcoverarchive.com/images/books/communist_manifesto.large.jpg

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0140186409.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg