A good book.

A good book.

A vivid imagination.

A grassy knoll and a tree for comfort.

Travel without the suitcase.

Not sure if in the color version I will keep the castle.

Cover Confusion—When two book covers use the same base image.

Never judge a book by it's cover?


On left: The Girl in the Glass; A Novel, 2005
On right: Life is Short but Wide, 2009

Oh, mighty confusion for the customer.

Two different books, published within 3 years of each other. The one on the left came first, the one on the right I saw in my Barnes & Noble email this morning.

Two different publishers, did they hire the same designer? What about the Art Director? Did anyone notice this design faux pas or was it deliberately done to increase the new book's sales? Yes, in most cases we designers pull images from the same stock...but this much similarity in design, including the tiny text within the door panels can't be coincidence. Or can it?

Cover differences:

Text treatment.

Butterfly instead of boots.

One is cropped slightly closer to the viewer.

Higher saturation in image on right.

At any rate, I recommend reading Jeffrey Ford to anyone, The Portrait of Mrs. . Charbuque was an exquisite read. He's the author of the book on the left.

Which cover design do you prefer?

Update: Googled for more info and better written too!

Farseer and Tawny Man series by Robin Hobb.

Seriously good stuff.

I am on the final book in the Tawny Man series and it's killing me.

I just got it in my head that "Falling Slowly" on the soundrack for ONCE would make a great music video for The Farseer/Tawny Man Series by Robin Hobb.

The lyrics are almost perfect to the series. It even has the word "fool" in it and has a bit about making choices.

Glen Hansard - Falling Slowly Lyrics

I don't know you
But I want you
All the more for that
Words fall through me
And always fool me
And I can't react
And games that never amount
To more than they're meant
Will play themselves out

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
You've made it now

Falling slowly, eyes that know me
And I can't go back
Moods that take me and erase me
And I'm painted black
You have suffered enough
And warred with yourself
It's time that you won

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you had a choice
You've made it now

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you had a choice
You've made it now
Falling slowly sing your melody
I'll sing along

Book Review. The Temeraire Series by Naomi Novik.

I want to begin by expressing how much I HATE alternate history books. I despise them with a deep passion unknown to most lovers.

Knowing that, you now know how much I went out on a limb to read these books and how decidedly turned around this aversion became.

I was blown out of the air, so to speak. This series truly is a combination of Jane Austin's formal,clever prose and O'Brian's adventure. Yet wholly unique and fresh.

What hooked me was the hatching of Temeraire. On my first Borders visit to find new reading material, I had left off before this momentous event and thought, how dull. The second time I picked it up and read where I left off, I ventured into the dialogue after the lead dragon's hatching and was instantly hooked.

Within three weeks I read all 4 books, and now I am waiting with extreme impatience for the promised excerpt of book 5 that was supposed to have been sent to me upon signing up on www.temeraire.com.

Ms. Novik is very clever indeed. The plots are well thought out, the dialogue sparkles. The dragons are dear. A stinky mushroom for lunch that was insignificant in book 2 becomes dire by book 4. This shows a very deeply thought out continuity of plot.

The battles are frequent and exciting.

I loved them and I recommend them highly. And I am dieing for at least an excerpt from book 5.

Luckily, Ms. Novik is a fast writer. It seems like she produces one a year, possibly because they have all been under 400 pages, unlike the current trend of 1,000 pages or so. The next is due out July 2008, thank goodness. I much rather like the nice, neatly packaged book under 400 pages if there is a promise of one a year.

If my oppinion mattered I would give this series a 5/5 star rating.

Until then I am at a loss of what next to read that could possibly compare.