The Worst Book Covers of 2006
Written byPosted on December 8, 2006
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Bookslut revealed the Best Book Covers of 2006. But, just as Sherlock Holmes has Moriarty, just as Doctor Who has the Master, and just as that 1040 tax refund has an overwhelming amount of paperwork, so too does the publishing industry have its bastard stepchildren.
Behold! Here are the worst book covers (often for perfectly worthwhile books) for 2006.
Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta: Bad enough that we see a monochromatic image of a woman clad in a sweater and jeans that tells us absolutely nothing about the book. (Is this an academic response to Our Bodies, Ourselves or a novel?) But that horrid yellow text, intended to capture the wretched typographical triumphs of the 1970s, causes this eyesore to be a classic case of a book being unfairly discriminated against by its cover. No wonder this fantastic novel didn’t sell so well earlier this year. Thankfully, the paperback version has a much better cover.
Talk Talk by T.C. Boyle: I don’t know about you, but nothing gets me more interested in reading a book than seeing an extreme close up of a mouth, complete with a pink saliva-drenched gum and a slightly offset tooth. The book’s title appears in the mouth’s cavernous onyx, suggesting to the reader that she will be eaten alive. But since there is no lower row of teeth here, how can the reader be sure of this? And what’s with the intermittent yellow text? Will the reader catch gingivitis? Is there any significance to the letter A? Or does the A stand for Ass? This is another good book marred by a gormless cover.
The Company by Max Barry: A glazed donut, per se, is not necessarily a bad thing, except of course when a photographer is foolish enough to get an extreme close-up of its transfat gooiness (complete with drop shadow!), the white frosting and oil revealed for its sickening nature courtesy of reflective light. What’s even more abysmal is that some unknown figure has taken a bite out of this disgusting donut. If I wanted to be reminded of the dark side of human gluttony, I’d spend the day at a Dunkin Donuts watching people deposit their spoils. This is a sickening cover. The photographer should have just hired a drunkard to spew into a bright red bucket. (You’ll notice too that the first three covers listed here use variants of yellow, little realizing that this hue is a hopeless choice unless you’re a really good designer.)
The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue: Hello Mr. Tree! Please be my friend! I’m stretching my arms in the air! Or not. Maybe I’m trying to wrap my arms impossibly around your great trunk? I really don’t know, but I’m sure the cover designer knows! Because there’s apparently GREAT IMPORT in my strange juxtaposition. But never mind me. You, Mr. Tree, are the reason why people should buy this book! You’re big and you’re strong and you’re gray! Really, really gray! Never mind that your size is outright preternatural or that you’re cast against a puke-green skyscape that will keep me off key lime pie for the next six months. This is a fairy tale! A fairy tale that must mean something.
Culture Warrior by Bill O’Reilly: Nothing says “this man means business” than a constipated-looking Bill O’Reilly dressed in a blue hoodie, with O’Reilly’s tousled hair (or what’s left of it) suggesting that the man’s recovering from a weekend bender at a ski resort. But in case you weren’t convinced of O’Reilly’s seriousness, there’s an American flag to his right. And in case you weren’t aware that this was a book about America, there’s red and white text, with the red text clashing horribly against the background photo.
Dishonorable Mentions: Richard Ford’s The Lay of the Land (blue as far as the eye can vomit!); Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (would it have killed the designers to consider text legibility?); and Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion (a conceptual failure reminiscent of Minoru Yamasaki’s lifeless contributions to architecture).
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
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Shame, because in my opinion COMPANY was one of the best books of the year.
The Worst Book Covers of 2006…
Bookslut revealed the Best Book Covers of 2006. But, just as Sherlock Holmes has Moriarty, just as Doctor Who has the Master, and just as that 1040 tax refund has an overwhelming amount of paperwork, so too does the publishing industry have its bastard…
Honestly, I thought the Bookslut picks were actually some of the worst covers of the year. The McSweeney’s was a parody of something that’s already a parody. (A bit like Spaceballs parodying Star Wars.) And this minimalist trend in book design is generally an excuse for rewarding mediocrity.
JeffV
But Dawkins’s cover was just so, y’know, shiny! I thought it was…divine.
OK, the type on the COMPANY cover pretty much sucked, but I read the book on the strength of the donut (oh, and the flap copy…) and I felt amply rewarded. Pretty darned funny and the visual — as you’ve perhaps surmised — was an apt metaphor. Don’t think I would have picked up any of your other choices, nor any of Bookslut’s picks.