This time round the covers are quite similar but what are your thoughts on the US (LHS), UK (RHS) and Canadian (below) covers? Which would entice you most to pick the book up if you were not familiar with the books of Elly Griffiths?
If you have read it, how well do the covers match the story?
Read the Euro Crime review by Maxine Clarke of The House at Sea's End.
Unfortunately the US edition is not out until January 2012.
14 comments:
Karen - Oh, I do like this feature of yours :-). I would say I like the UK version the best. I think it evokes the loneliness of the setting quite well.
I like both the U.S. and British covers, but I'd give the edge to the British cover. I like the uniformity of the font and the gull.
I like the British but prefer the American cover for once - if only they´d remove that skull. The Canadian is not a bad cover, but of course the sea should be visible.
At least the US and Canadian covers are grammatical, unlike the UK one. I like them all, but despite the grammar bloop I think the UK cover is marginally better. I might have preferred the US one if they had gone for consistent typesize per word!
Interesting that the UK version doesn't contain an apostrophe!
In this case, I like the UK cover the best. It evokes the solitude of "a house at sea's end."
With the Canadian cover, there's not enough of a graphic to evoke an emotion; it's mostly type-face. And the U.S. cover has a house on a cliff, which doesn't evoke the feelings either.
Definitely the U.K. cover. It conveys the solitude of "the house at sea's end," and brings an air of mystery to the book.
The other two covers really don't convey this mood.
The apostrophe does appear on the actual UK cover but was missing from the online copy I originally used.
I think I have taken the old 'don't judge a book by its cover' adage to heart as I do rarely look at book covers and never that closely :) I would have said the US one has a better pic that seems to reflect the story more but I defer to my betters (comments above) on the matter of fonts, skulls, apostrophe placement and the like :)
Ah, that's better, Karen, thanks for the update!
I'm more drawn to the US cover, most likely because of the photo.
I'm going to have to go with the American cover on this one anthough I agree with Dorte about the skull. The angry waves give the cover a threatening air that makes the reader expect suspense whereas the distant, lonely look of the UK cover makes me think it might just be boring.
Definitely the UK cover. Might pick that one up.
Would NOT pick up either of the others.
BTW I always (and i think so would a lot of other people when in bookshop at least) judge a book by it's cover. Of course, I modify my judgement when I start reading...
I don't lknow much about Dorothy Parker's writing - and maybe someone has corrected you by now but-
it was Gertrude Stein who remarked about her home
town of Oakland, CA, that "there is no there there.'
However, having visited LA a few times, I have to
agree that there is no there there.
Ron Nowicki
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