Cover Love: Two recent acquisitions that make me go mmm…

There are a couple of books which I’ve received lately that have really taken my fancy as far as their cover designs go. I’m so enamoured by them that I thought I’d share the passion, and file them under a quick ‘Cover Love’ post.

The first is Harper’s (US) recently published Emergency from bestselling author Neil Strauss. The book itself shows a lot of promise. It’s a kind of guidebook for survival with a comedic twist, with the material for the book being gathered by Strauss, as he submerged himself in a quest to learn the skills he thought he (and us) would need, to survive extreme emergency situations.

The book sounds great, and I’ll find out more about that soon, but for now it’s the cover that really ‘does it’ for me. It was designed by Todd Gallopo of Meat and Potatoes Inc. and it’s been faked up to look like an emergency pull station (embossed scratches and all), and I think it looks pretty darn realistic, or at least as realistic as it can look for a book cover, without sticking a real emergency pull station box on it (hey why didn’t you think of doing that then Todd? )). The theme is continued on the rear (as you can see from this shot), with the blurb etc. being made to look like an emergency instruction panel. A perfect cover for a book about emergency survival? I would say so. Not a ‘huggable’ book cover by any stretch of the imagination, but one whose design makes it wholly covetable. Good job Todd!

The second ‘cove I love’ is the recently translated Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou. Published last month in the UK by Serpent’s Tail, this satirical novel by Congo-Brazzaville born Mabanckou is set in a dilapidated Congonese bar, where writer Broken Glass (great name), sets out to write a book. As a total unknown to me (both title and author), that’s all I’m saying for now on the story, but oh how I love the book’s cover art.

Designed by Gavin Morris using an illustration by Bill Bragg (who I think is the same Bill Bragg who’s founder and editor of Le Gun. Can anyone confirm for sure?), the cover just zings out with its predominant lime-green colouring, which is offset nicely by the colouring of the character’s skin, which in turn is complimented perfectly by the orange striping of his shirt. Absolutely gorgeous and definitely, unlike the utilitarian cover of the Strauss’ book, a cover worth hugging. Hehehe…would you believe I’m a totally heterosexual male? )

So two delicious covers for what looks to be two great books. I’ll post more on both of them as and when I get them on the pile.

___________________

‘Cover Love’ offers me the one indulgence of pushing aside the old adage of ‘never judging a book by its cover’, and celebrating with an unadulterated passion, my incurable lust for book cover design.