It's funny how seeing something on the internet gets your mind racing down certain paths. I saw the t-shirt above (minus the phrase "Book Cover Edition") and for some reason, I started thinking of pet peeves concerning books.
Although I have a few pet peeves when it comes to book covers, I'm only going to talk about one. I was reading along quite happily in Lou Berney's excellent November Road when a saguaro was mentioned. I immediately wanted to stop and scratch one of my pet peeves. Why the urge to scratch? Because the characters were in Las Vegas, and saguaros do not grow in Nevada! It's a fact that's easily checked, and in the progression from the writing of a book to its being published, November Road passed by several pairs of eyes. Nobody caught it.
No one caught it with these covers, either.
The Desert Hedge Murders takes place in Nevada, and Holmes on the Range travels quite a bit of the Old West, but the Amlingmeyer brothers don't make it to Arizona either! (I think I've progressed from scratching to grinding my teeth.)
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| Where you find saguaros. |
How many people who read November Road or The Desert Hedge Murders or the Japanese version of Holmes on the Range, visited Nevada, Texas, or who-knows-where and wondered where the saguaros were? How many people who saw those John Ford Westerns went to Texas looking for the Mittens or the Three Sisters? At least I can say one thing about the cover of Patricia Stoltey's mystery: there's not a saguaro to be found on any of its subsequent covers.
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| Denis & the tallest saguaro we've ever seen. |
I'll bet all of you have some sort of pet peeve when it comes to book covers. Care to share one?
You'd think someone would have caught that about the saguaros, Cathy. I know what you mean about that being irritating. One of my pet peeves is when a cover has blurbs all over it. I get it that authors want their books recommended - I do. But that irks me.
ReplyDeleteI agree. The more blurbs, the less chance there'll be that I'll read even one of them.
DeleteLove this, Cathy! And that is a tall, tall saguaro. So, I've been to Texas (did you know that?) and I hate it when scenes are filmed that are so obviously (to me) not Texas. Mountains with snow and trees - um, no. Mountains in West Texas (far West Texas) but few trees and lots of dirt and rocks and small cactus. Ha!
ReplyDeleteAs to book covers - I don't like the back of the woman's head and am weary of the woman walking away from us, especially when she is in a red coat. Why a red coat? Part of why I like reading on my Kindle is that I rarely look at the cover, even though I do like covers.
Yes, that's another good thing about the Kindle-- you're not faced with the cover every time you pick up your book.
DeleteYes, I also dislike seeing the back of women's heads or the sides of their faces. Don't get why publishers do that. Have read explanations that make no sense.
ReplyDeleteI have yet to hear one that makes any sense to me either.
DeleteI just finished a book that has two book covers, neither of which I like, but one has nothing at all to do with the plot, characters, setting. The series is one I like, but I wonder why the publisher couldn't find a book cover that connects and helps sell the book. Even the one that connects is not one that would draw my attention without the author's name.
ReplyDeleteI just saw your post talking about the book with the two covers. I'd walk past both of them without picking either one up, so if the publishers wanted to sell the book to me, they failed miserably.
DeleteWomen are most of fiction book buyers, including crime fiction. So as far as I know we like women protagonists. Women's faces on covers would seem to be more compelling.
ReplyDeleteI agree.
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