I spent quite some time looking for a book where the process had gone awry, but the closest I could find was this, where both the cover is mildly inappropriate and the author askew. But it's hardly Tutis-level incompetence.
As Peter points out, it seems odd to give specific editions of a book covers they never had, but it does help a little in navigating Google Books' appallingly organised catalogue, where books are frequently assigned completely random publication dates, where long out-of-copyright texts are unavailable to view, and where scans are sometimes unreadable and text transcriptions demented. Google Books is an almost wonderful resource. It's a bit like having the world's biggest, most extensive library, and then handing reshelving over to a troop of proboscis monkeys. The book you want is almost certainly in there somewhere, but finding it is another matter.
I did also stumble across a weird new Google Books innovation: 3D ebooks.
Somehow, I don't think the way to replicate the physical book reading experience with e-readers is to saddle everyone with 1950s red/green glasses that make your brain hurt.
15 comments:
The illustration for Lord Jim seems exactly right!
It does! Although, puzzlingly, I downloaded that version from GB, and it has no illustrations, so I'm not even sure which edition it was taken from.
All this talk about Google Books, why does nobody ever mention the Internet Archive? The quality of our work is superior, and we actually do all those pesky things Google doesn't (like determine the copyright status of every book, and scan only those in the public domain or which the copyright holder has given us permission to scan).
On top of that, we've been doing it for just as long as they have. Perhaps even longer.
August: You're right, the IA is fantastic! In my defence, I have posted about it a couple of times in the past: see http://causticcovercritic.blogspot.com/2009/01/mental-world-of-preminger-archive.html and http://causticcovercritic.blogspot.com/2008/10/swahili-alice.html
This is an amazing blog, I love that someone has an entire blog devoted to book covers. I was wondering if you had seen the new-ish Penguin Classics, particularly A Scarlet Letter? I wrote about it in my own blog and it has other relevant links: http://librarianslifeinbooks.blogspot.com/2010/06/day-76-something-else.html.
There's also a book called Brave Girl Eating coming out that mimics the Twilight cover, would love to hear your thoughts on that one too.
That is amazing.
http://wofgtg.blogspot.com/
Hey, Amy: Thank you for that. You'll be "pleased" to know that Ruben Toledo, who did that 'Scarlet Letter' cover, is now doing three more for Penguin Classics: 'Dracula', 'Jane Eyre' and 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'. I haven't seen them yet, so I'm not sure if they'll improve on the first three.
That 'Brave Girl Eating' cover also reminds me of these (somewhat ruder) covers: http://causticcovercritic.blogspot.com/2007/10/eve-apple-temptation.html
amazing book covers! a pleasure to look at! i especially loved the Call of the Wild.
it certainly puts Tutis in a new light.
Nice work. Keep posting. I will visit your site often.
3D ebooks? Can't we all just start reading normal books again?
Google Books is pretty awesome though :) I'll check out the Internet Archive, it sounds pretty good so far.
like a very nice blog
hahaha, 3D text is ridiculous and so bad for your eyesight...
I came across this one the other day - Medical News from 1898 - kind of a cover fail, I would say: http://books.google.com/books?id=sz0TAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.
Oh dear, that's no good at all.
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