This exercise is one where I had to look at book covers and find ones with a certain theme then write about them and why the design may have been chosen.
An out-of -focus photograph:
Wake Up Sir! By Jonathan Ames
The image is both out of focus and slanted to one side on
this cover, which highlights the story quite well as it is about whether the
character depicted in the photo exists or not. It is a novel where the main
character drinks a lot and so therefore is unsure if he has a butler or not, I
think the image shows this quite well, especially having the image at an angle.
This immediately made me guess the drinking theme of the story and so it is
quite an accurate portrayal, and although blurred, it is obvious that the image
is of a butler-type character.
An inverted photograph:
Lost and Found by C.P. Surendran
The image on the front cover is upside down, and there are
items appearing to fall from the buildings which are items mentioned in the
synopsis. The book has a lot of different characters, including a Pakistani
terrorist living in Mumbai, a beggar who is now in films, an autorickshaw driver,
and includes lots of different stories depicting the characters. The images
appearing to fall and the plane lead us to think about what might happen and
also to me give a sense of the potential chaotic nature of the book. The man
falling in the picture has also displaced the O, again leading me to think
about chaos.
An historical archival photograph, but not depicting the
subject precisely:
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
The edition I chose is not strictly fitting the criteria but
I feel it illustrates it well anyway. The book is set in post-world war 1 Britain, which
to me means there should be a black and white photo on the cover, but this
edition has a colour photo of a field leading into a small forest. The book
discusses death, of soldiers in the war and of one of the main characters who
commits suicide, and the simplicity of the image with the shadows gives a sense
of peace within the theme of death.
A still-life close-up
The Body by Hanif Kureishi
The cover has what looks like a set of plain Russian dolls
on the front, shot from the top and 2 have the lid missing. The story is about
an old man dealing with his own mortality, having his brain transplanted into a
younger body, and all the issues of mind/body separation that come with it. The
story is about different kinds of bodies, and the plainness of the Russian dolls
on the cover depicts the simplicity of the body, contrasting with the
complicated nature of the mind. The missing lids on 2 dolls point to the
transplant – removal of the core.
A minimalist landscape or outdoor scene with a large area of
sky
The “Driving over Lemons” trilogy by Chris Stewart
All 3 covers have a large area of bright blue sky, depicting
the ideal view that people have of this region of Spain. This draws you in, you want
to find out more about this magical area. It also gives a similarity to the 3
books, making them related to each other in some way. The blue draws out the
bright colours on the covers too, and we expect a bright story inside. What we
get is a truthful account of what life is really like for a Brit moving to the
area, and lots of humour too. As soon as I saw the theme, I thought of these
books, although my copies are actually in the UK at the moment.
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