So what are you thoughts on the US (LHS) and UK (RHS) covers? Which would entice you to pick the book up if you were not familiar with Stieg Larsson? (Note the location of the apostrophe in each case...)
(I've had a number of people come into the library having read #3 first and then reserving the first two.)
Here is the Euro Crime review by Maxine of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest.
Here is an article on the process behind the design of the US cover of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo which is in a similar vein to the above.
8 comments:
I'd pick up the US version because a) I'd be intrigued that a hornet had a whole nest to itself, and b) I find the simplistic, almost 50's, style of the cover attractive so I'd be wondering if the story had the same 'atmosphere'.
I'd also pick up the UK version as I'd be intrigued by the quote from The Independent. The face on the design at lower resolution doesn't look real, gives it the look of a cheap computer graphic in my view. That may put me off if I was browsing small covers on line. The higher res version is fine, if you like green.
Karen - I like the UK cover. It's more compelling, I think.
Is the US one a really really big hornet maybe :-) I wouldn't pick up either but that's because I disliked the one I read but, based on the covers, I like the colours of the UK one, but I don't like the style (which seems ubiquitous these days) of having a big face on the cover. From cover alone I probably wouldn't pick up either, but the US one just shades it.
I prefer the UK cover because it more closely resembles the original Swedish cover.
... faces that are only partly there seem to be the rage, but usually it's the top cut off, which suggests the zombies have been at it again.
I'm not really fond of either cover, but the US one is more puzzling and complex. Not necessarily more attractive, but more odd and intriguing. I don't like being given a visual of a main character, would rather form my own picture (and she doesn't look like that to me).
I don't really like either. One advantage of the UK one is that if you look at all three covers together, you see the back of her head (book 1), profile (book 2) and full face (book 3), which is nice. If you just take the covers in isolation, I think I prefer the US one of Hornet's (though I did not like the US covers of the previous two). I also did not like the UK paperback film tie-in edition. I suppose I am hard to please. My favourite of all of them is the UK edition of the first book (the red one).
BTW, I thought the French (?) cover shown in the link - with Wednesday Addams wearing a necklace of heads - was one of the most entertainingly bizarre bits of cover art I've seen for ages.
I didn't like looking at that gray cover online for months on Amazon, but when I got my advance copy from Knopf I was pleasantly surprised that the cover is shiny silver! So I'll vote for the US version. I never like covers that purport to show a character from the book, though this series is better than most, even though the tattoo is all wrong -- see Noomi's in the Swedish movie versions.
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