By Its Cover is a series of posts wherein I read a book based solely on my love of the cover. No reading the jacket, no checking reviews! Because The Salt Path was a book chosen purely for its cover, I didn’t even realise this was a memoir until I started reading. Instinctively I balked, but it quickly turned into an unputdownable read and one that will surely stay with me for a very long time. Raynor Winn and her husband Moth lose everything due to a bad investment and a friend’s betrayal. After years of fighting in the courts which…
By Its Cover is a series of posts wherein I read a book based solely on my love of the cover. No reading the jacket, no checking reviews! I have no idea why, but I initially assumed the figure on the cover of this book was a satyr, half-man, half-goat, because I thought it had hooves. It wasn’t until I really paid attention that I realised that they were simply shoes and this was just a man. Having read the book, I’m no wiser as to what the cover represents but the quirkiness energy of the man with his umbrella, set…
By Its Cover is a series of posts wherein I read a book based solely on my love of the cover. No reading the jacket, no checking reviews! Well, this book was a surprise and a half. It quite literally threw itself at my feet in the library. OK, not really, I knocked it off the shelf when reaching for another book. After dutifully putting it back I felt compelled to pluck it out again. The cover’s rainbow meets unicorn meets glitter explosion look completely defies the “How to Murder your Life” title, which, all combined had an oddly compelling allure…
By Its Cover is a series of posts wherein I read a book based solely on my love of the cover. No reading the jacket, no checking reviews! I just could not stay away from this book with its crazy and colourful concoction on the cover (alliteration wholly unintentional). It smacks of a sci-fi futuristic setting, so there’s that. But I still couldn’t resist giving it a go. It looks a little like a bird of paradise that has bloomed but then decides to just keep on going… in whatever direction it fancies in the moment. I did have to read…
By Its Cover is a series of posts wherein I read a book based solely on my love of the cover. No reading the jacket, no checking reviews! Based on the true story of Judge Joseph Crater, a New York Supreme Court judge who one summer night in 1930 gets into a cab and is never seen again. At the time his disappearance created a media firestorm and to this day, nobody knows what happened to him. In Ariel Lawhon’s book Crater’s story belongs to his wife Stella, their maid Maria and Ritzi, Crater’s rumoured showgirl mistress, all of whom have…
By Its Cover is a series of posts wherein I read a book based solely on my love of the cover. No reading the jacket, no checking reviews! Just look at that cover. It cracks me up every time I see it. If those boys aren’t English then I’m the Queen of Sheba! I found this book in a used bookstore drawn instantly by those rascally faces and the title that seemed so appropriate. This just had to be a novel set in England. And indeed it is — Birmingham of the 1970’s. It is framed by opening and closing pages…
By Its Cover is a series of posts wherein I read a book solely on my love of the cover. No reading the jacket, no checking reviews! This is where I must confront my apparent obsession with books featuring elegantly dressed women on the cover. See here and here. Somewhere I read a phrase that this book was a “substantive beach read” which I thought to be an excellent turn of phrase and on which describes this book perfectly. It’s an easy to read page turner grounded in good writing, excellent dialogue (really, that can make or break a book) and a decently complex…
By Its Cover is a series of posts wherein I read a book based solely on my love of the cover. No reading the jacket, no checking reviews! Strangely, I have had my eye on this book, The World To Come, by Dara Horn, for the better part of the last decade. When my son was small he loved to play on the Thomas the Train play table at Barnes and Noble. Taking him there meant that I could steal a few moments to briefly glance at all the new books out. This cover continually caught my eye with its whimsical…
By Its Cover is a series of posts wherein I read a book based solely on my love of the cover. No reading the jacket, no checking reviews! I was pleasantly surprised by The Piano Teacher, by Janice Y. K. Lee. Lured by the graceful curve of a neck and the beautiful combination of colours, I found myself, unexpectedly, reading a book set in World War II. With a bit of a twist. A twist for me at any rate…while I have read many a book set in this time period, mostly in Britain, sometimes in France or Poland, I have…
I’m a huge fan of the flower still life paintings of the Dutch masters. Whilst my own world tends to be filled with muted tones and neutrals, I find the rich and vivid colours of those flowers set against a dark background, highlighting light and texture, to be just stunning. Hardly surprising then that this book cover would lure me in, not only for that gorgeous tulip but because the pages within seem to promise an historical setting. The title refers to an interesting in Holland’s economic history. Holland in the 1600s was experiencing a Golden Age. The creation of the…
