Wow. It’s been almost six months since I did one of these. The long hiatus may have something to do with the fact that during the fall my coffee consumption dropped dramatically. I stopped punctuating all of my errands with stops at either Starbucks or the B&N. Or maybe I’m just a slacker.

In any case, without further ado…

Let me begin with a favorite author, Anne Tyler. Although I don’t really remember how I “discovered” Ian McEwan or Jane Smiley or Barbara Kingsolver or many of the authors I love the bestest, I remember very clearly running across a copy of Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant in a Kmart. I bought it because the title and cover art intrigued me.

Sad, then, that in recent years her book covers have come to look like this:

It looks like the kind of thing Macon Leary might buy to read on planes. Or perhaps the kind of thing a spinster might tuck into her bag of knitting.

Based on the description on Amazon, I don’t think I’ve been seeing what the designer wants me to see. All that plaid … I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be a blanket, wrapped around one of Tyler’s stock-in-trade curmudgeonly and hidebound protagonists. But for weeks I’ve seen this cover on store shelves and I’ve thought that the plaid belonged schoolgirl uniform. Look closely at that hand–it’s impossible to tell whether it’s an old hand or a young hand, a male hand or a female hand. And in any case, whether the cover depicts a curmudgeon or Catholic school attendee, it contains only one element that makes me want to buy the book: the author’s name. If only that one attractive element weren’t set in such a boring-ass typeface.

On the other hand, I picked this up right away:

I love, love, love this. The text-only treatment of the title–the simplicity of it, the judicious use of color, the way it seems to be moving into view or moving out of view–is pure genius. With incredibly modest materials and a little bit of thought, the designer has created something that practically leaps off the shelf. Unfortunately, once it leapt off the shelf and into my hand, I discovered two things. First, it’s a short story collection, which I hardly ever buy.* Second, the design of the book’s interior is disappointing at best. The type is too big, and the margins are too narrow; it made my eyes hurt just to flip through it.

Another leap-off-the-shelf sort of cover:

This cover is really all about that crusty, well-used shovel and the ragged, hand-drawn text on its blade. It works so well that I wish the designer hadn’t floated it in that stormy, apocalyptic landscape–or, if not in, then above, or in front of, or … whatever. The background adds nothing; in fact, I think it’s a distraction. And I do have a quibble about the shovel itself: the book’s title is Blacklands, not Black Lands, but it’s easy to miss that tiny little hyphen. It gets somewhat lost in the shadow. It could be a mite thicker.

I started this post by declaring my love of Anne Tyler. That love still burns bright. My love for Don DeLillo, however, not so much. Underworld was a long haul, but a work of unmitigated brilliance. I liked Cosmopolis, though apparently many readers did not. Ratner’s Star was largely incomprehensible. I couldn’t make it through Libra either of the times I tried, and by the time I gave up the second attempt, I found myself getting actively annoyed. DeLillo’s dialogue, which I loved at first, eventually came to seem too mannered, and–pet peeve!–all of the characters talk the same.

It’s very unlikely, then, that I’ll ever attempt Point Omega, not least because the cover creeps me out:

You see it, too, right? It’s a face. The infinity symbol forms the eyes, possibly wearing spectacles. The mountains are the hair. The shrubs form a nose and mouth. I have to move on; it’s staring at me.

I’m on the fence about this one:

Great title, of course. But the design? It may owe just a little too much to Let the Great World Spin–the use of white space, the red line drawings that wrap around. And the iridescent O’s?** Why? Just … why?

Perhaps I’m drawn to minimalist design lately. Here’s another that caught my eye:

Sure, it’s a blindingly obvious interpretation of the title, but it works. I like the way the column of words stands in for motion lines, and the way “a novel” and the author’s name form the ground on which the little girl will fall. The choice of color is fantastic. It’s a great color in any case, but also admirably unpredictable–not the color of any sky I’ve ever seen or would want to see, but not completely out of range, either.

One last cover, also somewhat minimalist:

Bodoni! (Or, okay, more likely Didot, but still.)

Bodoni/Didot notwithstanding, I’m inclined to quibble about that big honkin’ all-cap LOUISE ERDRICH. Mixed case would probably have been just fine. But never mind. The lower-case title makes up for it, and I like the way the blurred figure both separates “shadow” and “tag” and almost casts a shadow on the word “shadow.” The blue tint subtly but deftly evokes a detail of the novel itself–that the protagonist keeps a diary in a blue notebook. There is, too, a elegiac quality in both the choice of color and the composition of the image–appropriate for a novel that chronicles the collapse of a family.

I’ve been aware of Erdrich since I lived in Minnesota. I’ve always associated her (and her late husband, Michael Dorris) with Minnesota and my time there. I think I may need to read this book.

* Turns out it’s somewhere in between a novel and a collection. The stories are linked and–as I understand it–share a common narrator.

** Yes, the O’s are iridescent.