Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

Okay Hell You Reading readers, if there are any out there. Due to life and stress and work (and lack thereof, cause of stress) I have been lax, but fear not I found this little ditty posted on the Guardian.co.uk's website about the difference between book covers in different countries.
In particular, the novel Everything is Illuminated cover in English and in French.
The English book cover has words written on it in font that are written in what appears to be a shaky hand. This is fitting given if you read the book you would know that the main narrator is kid who is learning English and his misuse of the various words and inappropriateness of syntax is hilarious. Therefore, the irrational, almost rambling style of font is appropriate.

The French book, however. . . I don't know what's going on here

I'll wait for you after the jump.

Done? Okay. So there's this guy doing an amazing reach-around. The medium of this cover appears to be in a lush watercolor. Maybe because it's France and they're a liberated, European country with less sexual hangups. You can see topless women on primetime over there; it's no big deal. The difference is design could just be cultural thing. There certainly is a lot of coquette-ishness going on here. I did kind of like how the woman is looking at the guy as if to say, "what do you think you're doing buddy?", and the guy is looking at the placement of his hands with a smug smile.

A commentator on the article said it reminded him or her of Marc Chagall's "The Lovers"; however the dislocation of limbs that must be necessary for any normal person attempting a recreation of the French cover reminds me of Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss".

Ebooks- the death of the book cover?

Charlie Brooker- a misanthrope for The Guardian feels that ebooks are the future and unavoidable. I'm a self-centered attention whore and would normally never dream of letting another writer set foot on my blog, here goes:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/15/charlie-brooker-ebook-convert

Does not having a book cover mean no one will continue to judge books by their cover?
There's a reason why folks don't jump to the New England Journal of Medicine folks, there are no pictures. Even books that we don't consider picture books, like novels, have pictures. It's called cover art. Would we still even read these books if they didn't have a picture? What do you think?

(By the way, just admit you nearly skipped this blog because there were no pictures)

Big Girl by Danielle Steel

Can we talk about Danielle Steel for a minute? Wikepedia describes her as the 7th largest selling author, and according to her own personal website in the section entitled "About Danielle":
America reads Danielle Steel. And so does the rest of the world. There are more than 580 million copies of her books in print, and every one of her books is a bestseller. In short, Danielle Steel is the most popular author writing today. She is read by women, men, young people, old people in 47 countries and 28 languages.

Before I get into how awesomely hilarious it is that she divides her readers in 4 categories, I have immense respect for this person. She's lived the life of a character on Dallas or Dynasty. She was married five times and was the daughter of European socialites, and now lives in one of those gorgeous Victorian style houses in a hill in San Francisco somewhere. That also being said, I've never read any of her books which is odd considering I fit into at least two of the four mentioned categories. Maybe I'm not the right kind of woman or young person she is thinking of.
I remember seeing her books on friends' parents' bookshelves growing up and I'm just noting how different this book cover looks from her previous paperback covers. Her previous books show pictures of various body parts and abstract images, such as a hand, or house glowing with lights inside on a dark hill, or a rose. This current cover bears a definite semblance to the "chick-lit" style books of late. (I'm not implying that I had a literary snob's life growing up and that my parents read Marcel Proust in its original French; literally the only books on my parents shelves growing up were Tony Hillerman mysteries and the Holy Koran).
This cover art style is more in the line of The Nanny Diaries, The Devil Wears Prada, anything by Candace Bushnell, etc. She is clearly trying to appeal to a specific demographic that has spelled "B.A.N.K." for various publishing houses. The demographic that features twenty-thirty something women trying to have a career, an awesome boyfriend or making that awesome boyfriend a husband and drinking cappuccinos and buying cool shoes.
So Mrs. Steel is trying to branch out and appeal to new people, or at least her marketing dept. is. So there. Anyway, it doesn't matter what I say because it's going to be another best-seller, like all of her books have been since 1981.

The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova

Keeping with our aviary theme, this book cover also has a bird on it. At first I thought of the ballet, Swan Lake, because of the way the woman's feet are pointed. Then I thought, hey, there is too much symbolism going on here, especially with swans. Like the Zeus legend of Leda and the swan, where he turns himself into a swan and he gets this girl Leda pregnant. How sneaky is that? I would be pissed at this guy. This has to be the reason they have a swan and a pair of lady legs on the cover, this is obviously sexual. She even has a pair of guy's jeans entwined around her legs.

Also, I like how the cover has the words, "a novel" written on it in cursive so that it looks like a part of the artwork. It's like the artist was anticipating whoever is holding the book would forget they're reading one.

The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris

I like to think that these birds are strategically placed. I get it, I really do, the cover is meant to be haunting and create intrigue. There are the blackbirds/ravens (okay, you can't really tell if they're those types of birds, or if they're just far away or have the sun on their left side casting a shadow on the birds' right side) that are typically omens of doom and are foreboding. Remember the birds from that movie "The Birds?" There was a kickass scene where all the birds are gradually congregating on the jungle gym outside of the schoolyard and Tippi Hedren tells the teacher and they all get the kids to take them home? But as soon as they start running the birds just haul ass and go apeshit?
It's like that, that's what the book cover reminds me of.
On the other hand, there is the image of freedom that the birds flying away represent. Birds being released and flying off has been used so many times to represent it, it isn't even funny- like the doves being released at the Olympics or when Princess Jasmine from the Disney animated film "Aladdin" releases the birds from their cage (y'know, 'cause Jasmine's like a caged bird!).
While we're at it, check out the bird on the lowest, left-most corner. What is that, two birds stuck together? A pelican? A mutant bird with two sets of wings?

Media-match.com

I highly recommend this site for all you folks out there looking for work in the film/tv industry and whatnot:

http://www.media-match.com/jobsboard.php

Secrets of Eden by Chris Bohjalian

I've been reading up on the author, and it turns out in 1998 his book was selected as one of Oprah's book club choices, so I'm following a theme here, see? What we have is a faceless woman emerging from the water, transfixed by something we cannot see. She is so immersed in what she is seeing that she isn't worried about the vagueness of the body of water in which she is emerging from. Is it a giant pool? The ocean? The mouth of a river? The green fuzz bordering the blueness suggests a forest, making me think that it's a lake. This would support the Eden theme, ie "the garden of eden", etc.
With a title like Secrets of Eden, you're going to expect something Lifetime Network-y and we are not disappointed. For starters, the woman is wearing a sensible one-piece. A sexy thriller would put her in a bikini, facing the viewer. You can also tell by the ambiguity of the locale that she is obviously a woman with a, well, secret. There is a lot of mystery going on here. I bet it has something to do with a family secret. I wonder if her teen daughter is pregnant and getting beaten by her 20-year-old boyfriend. Or maybe her husband has a secret family? One thing is for certain: in less than a year we will be watching Oprah presents a Lifetime movie: Secrets of Eden. You can catch re-runs on the Oxygen network