It's a feel-good story!

By McClaverty.

Odd Cover Choices

Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely is a classic hardboiled noir book from 1940. There is one scene in it where a character gets hit upside the head with a bedspring . . . but is that really what you want to put on the book's cover?

As to romance books, they have their own cover formula of steamy girl/hunky guy.

So what went wrong here with Craig Douglas's 1966 romance The Hungry Ones? (Via.)

Record Books!

Graphic designer Christophe Gowans wondered "What if best-selling albums had been bestselling books instead?" Imaginary book designs followed. Lots of them. Check out his Flickr page here; some of the designs are available as postcards. (Via.)

Got to love those Penguin classics.

Via.

Only ONE thing can stop Dracula...

That hideous floral lamp!

Via Rex Parker. 

"Come on, get happy!"

This is one of the weirder contrasts between a book's title and its cover photo.

I guess that even when you're marked for terror, there's still always a reason to get happy. Or as my friend Donna said, "Maybe that's the photo the terrorist was using for a dartboard."

So that would be a case of "Come on! Get 'Happy'!"

Note: None of these jokes make any sense unless you've seen the Partridge Family TV show. (Via.)

"Green Eggs and Ham, rehashed

Ah, there's nothing like sprucing up a classic with a more appropriate title and/or cover art!

 Hamlet, reconsidered.

 Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo just gets a different dragon.

And Joseph Conrad's Into the Heart of Darkness is now a Maurice Sendak-ish children's adventure!

P.S. I'm not linking back to the self-apparent source for family-friendly reasons.

Tie My Shoe

As someone responsible for a number of unlikely-sounding books, I’m attuned to other volumes with unlikely-sounding titles. For example, I particularly liked both the name and cover of Your Hair Is Dead. The designers had fun here; it seems like they’re almost daring the youthful reader to learn about the spine-chilling facts of… hair! (Also in the same “It’s True!” series: An Octopus Has Deadly Spit and We Came from Slime.)

Over at Publishers Weekly, blogger Alison Morris gathered a few of her favorite vintage kids’ covers. These include the perplexing Goody Naughty Book (The Naughty Side). While I understand what Your Hair Is Dead is probably about, is the Goody Naughty Book part of a two-volume series, with the companion volume named Goody Naughty Book: The Goody Side? And if so, are the same kids shown in better moods? Speaking of which, since when did anyone being naughty look so surly? Maybe what the book really should be named is Good Naughty Book: The Cold-Busted and Sent to Your Room Side.

Here’s another vintage cover dealing with a child's inability to dress himself. So cute! Still, including the puppy is just gratuitous.

As for the Little Cub Scout, I actually remember this book from my own childhood! Looking at the cover today, I admire the spirited rendition of the scout’s energy. (But if memory serves, readers of the book learn that in the scout’s other hand is a freshly-skinned marmot.)