Bad Book Covers

I receive several e-mails a week from different sites wanting me to feature something on my blog. Appoximately 99% of those e-mails clearly come from spanners who have no idea that a blog called In Bed With Books is about books.

OnlineCollege.org maintains a blog about a variety of topics designed to interest college students. Doesn't really line up with IBWB, but the article I received an e-mail about does fit my interests: 25 Worst Book Covers of All Time.  I'm impressed by the variety of genres covered, though most of the books are pulpy SF.  It's so easy to make fun of pulpy SF covers.

But I'm always interested in cover conversations.  After all, different people have different tastes.  Although some cover art is brilliant or awful no matter what.

Judge a Book by Its Cover is a hilarious blog by a former librarian Maughta (and a few others). If you think you know hideous book covers, wait to be astouded by the depths of awful she and her compatriarts have illuminated.

The famous Smart Bitches, Trashy Books blog frequently features awful romance covers.  (Cheesy romance covers come close to being as bad as pulpy SF covers.)

The super interesting Jacket Whys is another librarian blog.  She examines trends in children's and young adult book covers, whether they be good or bad. She also compares different editions of a book to track which covers work best.

I can't think of a cover I truly hate off the top of my head, but I love this one for Golden Fool by Robin Hobb.



It's detailed, beautifully colored, and the image directly relates to the contents of the book.  Plus, it shows a little skin without being faux sexy or impossible to carry on the bus without embarrassment.

Oh wait, I thought of a bad cover.



So, what covers do you hate or love?

Review: Burning Ambition (+ Contest)

By Jonathan Bernstein
Read my interview
Available now from Razorbill
Review copy

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
-from "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats

BURNING AMBITION begins much quicker and with more excitement than HOTTIE. Unfortunately, the Department of Hotness has peaked (which you can read in an excerpt here). There are no supervillians in Beverley Hills and soon the friends begin fighting. Dorinda and Kellyn both fall for David. T, the boyfriend, insults Alison. So, Alison hangs up her crime fighting gear to become an intern at her favorite magazine, Jen.

At first things go well. But fifteen-year-old editor Pixie Furmanovsky is close to the edge due to her father's neglect . . . and then she gains superpowers. But the Department of Hotness is in no shape to keep her at bay - they lack the convention to stop her passionate intensity. To win the day, the young teens will have to overcome their hormones to take down the tyke tycoon, and we all know how difficult that is when you're fifteen.

Sometimes BURNING AMBITION gets anvilicious. Ignoring your friends is bad. Ignoring a single coworker is bad. Ignoring your children is bad. Torturing people to get them to date you is bad. (Okay, so the last isn't really anvilicious. But it bears repeating.) Of course, BURNING AMBITION needs a strong moral center to counter-act the running joke of pee-filled balloons.

On the other hand, BURNING AMBITION is mostly just a fun and quick read. Alison isn't a typical post-THE DARK NIGHT RETURNS superhero. She's a girl into fashion and her boyfriend, who sometimes has trouble helping her friends with their issues because she's too wrapped up in her own. Though the friends have issues, they fit well together. Unlike most books I can take the main characters fighting with each other because they take steps to be happy. As mentioned above, when upset with her boyfriend, Alison finds a job that she finds fulfilling. Yes, she wants to reconcile with him, but she doesn't just lay around moping about it. Or the fighting works because it's cartoony. Kellyn and Dorinda definitely go over the top trying to win the boy.

If you need something quick this summer, you might want to pick up HOTTIE and BURNING AMBITION. Both are good beach reads. And when you read them on the beach, no one you know will see the atrocious covers.

--

I have two copies to giveaway. This is a lightning contest: first two to comment get it.

"Waiting On" Wednesday: Burning Ambition

I've been sitting on this cover since June, but it's time to discuss a HOTTIE cover once more. (Yes, that has has been done here three times. But the trailer is still a saving grace.)

Now, I am looking forward to the sequel. I enjoyed HOTTIE. I appreciate that this cover matches the redesigned HOTTIE cover, since branding is important to realizing two books belong together.

Let's build up, no?

The background: Simple, but fun. The blue balances the brightness of the red and yellow, and the contrast illuminates how the two figures in the foreground oppose each other.

The foreground: Love the expressions - these girls clearly don't think much of each other. But the clothes! I don't think there's a summary yet, but I've determined the plot is from their outfits:

Superheroine Hottie has a new nemesis, but she doesn't know who. She narrows it down to the Valley, given the girl's propensity for wearing a gold elastic belt over a yellow polyester prom dress - with a hair accessory that is so 2000. To blend in, Hottie throws a pleather jacket over her LBD and replaces her "H" with a "U" for "Undercover." She's going to show this hot mess the literal meaning of the words. But her nemesis has a burning ambition to escape the world of itchy, synthetic fabric clad villainy . . . and you can't fight fire with fire.

The typography: I like the tagline and author name, but wish a more exciting but complimentary script had been used for the title treatment. As is, it's easy to read but boring and doesn't balance out the figures on the bottom half of the cover. Maybe if the font were smaller and the girls took up more of the cover.

What do ya'll think?

ETA: Actual summary from Amazon:

Alison Cole and the Department of Hotness are back and ready for action in the sizzling sequel to Hottie—all about a Beverly Hills princess who can shoot fire from her fingertips!
Ever since defeating her evil stepmother, Carmen, Alison’s life has been totally fla-mazing. But when she wins a coveted internship at Jen Magazine, she’ll have to take on fifteen-year-old Editor-in-Chief Pixie Furmanovsky—the biggest Superbrat the world has ever seen! Pixie always gets what she wants, and now she’s after Alison’s boyfriend, T!

Can Hottie give little miss BratGirl a Super Sweet Sixteen that she’ll never forget? Or is this Superteen about to get superfired?

Current release date is 6 April 2010.