Judging Books by their Covers

This week, we venture into parts unknown

High-De-Ho, fine-looking, Bookstore-frequenting Iconoclasts!

First up, thank you for voting. Pretty much every subscriber did, which is amazing, and the results were unanimous. So, that’s why you’re getting a video (two, actually) this Wednesday.

This week’s video (the first one) is right here:

I’ve been working on another longer review video that explores all of Gillian Flynn’s work so far (in anticipation of a fifth book that I’ve now found out might not be coming out any time soon—hey ho).

I think it was while staring vacantly at the covers of her earlier books Sharp Objects and Dark Places, I realised just how much they’d been changed to look like Gone Girl after the fact: to make sure you knew the author wrote Gone Girl, and this book was just like it, I promise—I think that’s what got me started thinking (okay let’s be honest, getting grumpy) about book covers.

(SIDE NOTE: Do you reach an age where “thinking” and “getting grumpy” are one and the same? Is that age 45?)

I realised that through trial and error, I had a lot of instincts about book covers and their quotes, which is what I ended up sharing—all the different genres of insincere quotes, and the dreadful comparisons made to other books and writers; the untrustworthy authors and celebrities who’ll say anything to get on a book cover—and the glitteringly meaningless longlists and prizes. I also included a “Bullshit to English” Primer. It turned into a lot of fun (most rants are fun, at least for the rantee)—and I hope you enjoy it.

The original version of this video was more than 40 minutes long (40 minutes!—who am I, Ken Burns?) so I split the vid into two, with a “Judging Books by their Covers” section and the bit when I test the theory with “Book Cover Bingo” as a separate film, which you can see here:

So even though there aren’t any review reviews in these videos—you get pretty blunt assessments of what I think about Hunted by Abir Mukharjee, The Cat Who Solved a Murder by L. T. Shearer, The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz, as well as recapping a few books I’ve already reviewed on the channel.

And—well, Book Cover Bingo basically holds up. All the suspicions I had about certain rhetorical (torture) devices and particular words bound uncomfortably together between speech marks (like hostages in the trunk of a car), do seem to accurately hint that what you’re about to read isn’t very good.

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These videos are different from anything I’ve done before. What do you think? If you loved it, hated it or felt entirely indifferent, I depend on your steer.

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Here are the book cover bingo cards, version 1, should you want to try this game yourself some time. I’m going to continue to tinker around with this, and maybe subject some of the book covers in future reviews to the BCB treatment.

There are sure to be categories and words I’ve missed—let me know other things that you always look out for.

We’ll be back to reviews next time.

All the best from an island in the middle of a staggeringly strong contender for the “wettest, coldest and most miserable June this side of the Millenium”,

Slo-Motion-Smo