mimosaeyes's review
4.0
A well-rounded collection of essays, and certainly eye-opening in the contexts it provides. I found the preface by Mary Gaitskill and Duncan White's chapter particularly enjoyable, as well as the gallery of 80 new cover designs naturally.
jane_austyn's review
3.0
This book beautifully explores the relationship between books and their cover art. It handles the complexities of Lolita really well, and gave me a lot to think about. I don't typically enjoy nonfiction books (in this case, collection of essays) as my nighttime reading, but the first half of this book really drew me in. 5 stars for the first half (including the stellar cover art examples) and it almost made me mourn for the parallel universe where I could have been a book cover artist.
Then it went downhill. Unfortunately, because this isn't a book but a collection of essays following similar topics, it gets incredibly repetitive. I read the same lengthy quote about the author's preferred cover at least six times. Some of the covers referenced were also repeated several times.
Some of the chapters were also incredibly unnecessary. Why, when the central thesis seems to be covering (pun) Lolita's covers and the challenges that result, do we care about Russia specifically? Why do I care about Nabokov's other books? I skipped through the former and completely skipped the later.
The book was also unnecessarily wordy. I'm no slouch when it comes to vocabulary, but I'm glad I read this on my kindle, because I had to look up nearly a dozen words.
If someone had been able to synthesize all the information given into one book, I believe it could be shortened and much more enjoyable for the reader. I'd also be very interested in a kind of coffee table book of the covers created for this book along with complete explanations of the choices made by the artists.
Then it went downhill. Unfortunately, because this isn't a book but a collection of essays following similar topics, it gets incredibly repetitive. I read the same lengthy quote about the author's preferred cover at least six times. Some of the covers referenced were also repeated several times.
Some of the chapters were also incredibly unnecessary. Why, when the central thesis seems to be covering (pun) Lolita's covers and the challenges that result, do we care about Russia specifically? Why do I care about Nabokov's other books? I skipped through the former and completely skipped the later.
The book was also unnecessarily wordy. I'm no slouch when it comes to vocabulary, but I'm glad I read this on my kindle, because I had to look up nearly a dozen words.
If someone had been able to synthesize all the information given into one book, I believe it could be shortened and much more enjoyable for the reader. I'd also be very interested in a kind of coffee table book of the covers created for this book along with complete explanations of the choices made by the artists.
coloriz's review against another edition
challenging
informative
4.25
i learned a lot about book cover design that i didnt know before, and it was a lot more interesting than i thought it would
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