Book covers and titles

Hey, if you're ever in the Albuquerque area, bring Mr. Irish. We probably have other things in common, too.

You two would get along great! Not a doubt in my mind.

Two words:

San seriff. (for the title) anything with curlicues or exotic fonts means they're trying to make up for the content.

Hmmm. I've noticed that some people sort of talk with curlicues and exotic fonts. They also lack content.

I'm busted.

As a boy, I was always drawn in by cover art and titles like this. I would spend my paperboy wages on these books.

As we've gotten older, our tastes in literature have probably diverged. Still, at one time, I think I had read all the Hardy Boys in publication. Like other series, I believe it was a committee project, and probably continues to this day.

I once purchased a paperback copy of Satan's Saint, a biography of Sade, but not because of the cover. In fact, it was despite the cover. I can no longer describe it, but the publisher coated it with something tacky. My fingers were adhering, slightly, to the book and they could not slide over the front side.

I've been thinking a little more on this. I'm strongly put off by anything that seems to be romance lit and cover art that bodes ill in that it's-a-romance-book way wouldn't attract me. On the other hand, I like good illustration a great deal, on the cover or on the inside. A year or more ago when I was talking about a book that Fbaezer recommended, Agustin Yanez's The Edge of the Storm, I know I rattled on about the woodcut illustrations as much as about how I was taken by the writing. Good package - good writing, illustrations I liked. Still, my favorite books often don't have either cover art or illustrations.

I keep an old paperback book on bread by James Beard not so much for the recipes but for his own drawings.

One thing I've stopped doing re police procedurals is reading either the blurbs in the front of the book or much past the first line of any blurb on the back. I like discovering content myself and not being blurb fed what is about to happen, even if it is just the start of the storyline. But - I tend to choose procedurals for either the author if I know his or her work, or the setting, so it would be a way for me to at least learn about a new city or country other than my own if I ended up not liking the writing.

I don't have a kindle but I have a kindle app on my new phone. I am still broke so I have been going through the free classics and discovering a lot of them that I have always meant to read but had never gotten around to. I still enjoy real books more than digital, but I always have my phone and I find myself reading a lot more lately (which I have missed).