well, what do you know.
ok. so my last post was about bad cover art. andie's comment indicated that she looked for a madeleine l'engle book but was too turned off by the covers to choose any.ironically, the book i loaned to my friend a while back was a madeleine l'engle book.
truth be told, the only books i was really thinking about while writing the previous post were books by l'engle. i kid you not. the covers on most-if-not-all of her books are painfully and horrifically bad. just bad. "bad" as in "cheesy teenage angst story with characters who wear unflattering clothing and live in the unrealistic world of trashy romance novel drama".
and don't try to read the back of her books either. it's too misleading. the plots in her novels are usually secondary to character development. problem is, if you just read the back, you only get a poorly written summary of a plot that isn't the main point anyway.
here's my advice: read books by madeleine l'engle, but try your hardest to know as little as possible about them ahead of time. don't look at the cover, don't look at the back, don't read the title. in fact, do yourself a favor: take a box of l'engle books, put on a blindfold and make a random selection. then tear off the front and back covers. then remove the blindfold.
you might find yourself to be deliciously surprised. she's one of my favorite authors. seriously, folks. i've had to grit my teeth and force myself to look beyond the cover art. for whatever reason, l'engle book covers are particularly heinous. it's as though the publishers went out of their way to choose the absolute worst illustrators of all time.
sigh.
it's tragic, really. many people miss out because her books look too stupid.
but how else can we choose except to look at the picture and read the back cover? i honestly don't know. i suppose we could just trust a recommendation...
and that's too risky. books can be so...so personal. if YOU pick out a book and it proves to be sub-par, then you have wasted your own time. if someone ELSE picks it out, you run the risk of having your time wasted for you.
with that being said, if you are interested in reading works by madeleine l'engle, try reading more than one. if you end up feeling like it was a big fat drag, then the only thing really lost is my recommending reputation. and your time.
either way, enjoy your summer and read! i'm off to draw up a list...but i promise i won't draw cover art.
3 Comments:
Thisbyear I bought 3 of my students Madeline L'Engle books because she is great...hopefully they will look past the cover and read them.
Oh Gaaaaaaahd! Those covers are terrible. It hurts me so much. And also the Disney movie version of A Wrinkle in Time. OUCH!!!
I was so angry at the way they defiled my favorite childhood author that I left an angry rant at their website.
People who take quality and spin it into trash for money are FUCKWADS!!!!
And I mean that. I don't care who I just offended. This is a very heated issue for me.
emily. i love you so much. i laughed out loud at your comment.
Post a Comment
<< Home