Via La Peril: Penguin publishes books with blank covers so you can create your own masterpieces. Check out the PenguinBlog’s Flickr photostream for many, many interesting covers.
I was thinking about how this would translate to romance novels and the sorts of covers we could come up with for our favorites. Some are easy enough. My cover for Laura Kinsale’s Midsummer Moon, for example, would feature a hedgehog peeking out from under a sheet of paper, paws ink-stained. For My Lady’s Heart would be a battered suit of green armor laying on the ground with a falcon perched on it.
But others are a lot more difficult. To Love and to Cherish, for example, would be well-nigh impossible. There’s no visual hook; it’s about two people becoming best friends and lovers under very difficult circumstances. Maybe a close-up of a sheet of paper with Christy’s appalling poetry tucked into the trunk of a tree?
And then, of course, there are covers I could slap on the books I didn’t like—but then, most of the existing covers do a more than adequate job of conveying the awfulness of the contents.
Thinking about the covers I’d come up with for some of the sketchier paranormal romances makes me chuckle, too—but a lot of it would resemble bad furry fanart, which really is no laughing matter.
What are some of the covers you’d come up with for your favorite and not-so-favorite romance novels?
And I thought the anatomy coloring books was fun.
Hey Candy, how about the portrait Christy was doing of Anne at the end of TLATL?? Or would that be too much like a traditional Romance novel? How ironic.
Mother of pearl, is this the end of mantitty? Say it ain’t so. I envision boring, bland covers with a few flowers tossed upon them, nothing that proudly and in-your-face says, “I’m not afraid of books with half-naked guys with kilts and mullets!”
Robin: GENIUS. I like it.
Darlene: No no no. Far from it. The cover will be basically whatever you want—or can get away with, or can manage to create. Personally, I’m trying to picture how someone can doodle a representation of a paranormal romance protagonist with hemipenes on the cover while still keeping it semi-family-friendly. I suppose one attempt to be discreet and just have a stick figure with a speech bubble saying “LOL hey guys I have two dicks!” coming out of its mouth….
As long as they are well written and edited, I could settle for brown paper bag covers. I often use a bookcover when reading in public anyway…so many are embarrassingly awful.
The (nonromance)samples on the Penguin site were quite good. I cracked up at the mouldering penguin someone did for The Picture of Dorian Gray
That would be really fun! I’d be so busy thinking up cover art that i’d forget to read the book! but so far it looks like they are just offering up the classics. Man-titty is safe!
These look like fun! I want one! How often do you get to play with your books?
And that, like, totally came out all wrong. *is embarassed*
And then there’s this book
The Science of Orgasm
that comes in a plain brown wrapper — I dunno, I can think of a few images that might get this book to sell a few more copies…
Hmm, was trying to think of what romance cover I’d really like to redo when I realized… I have no idea what the original cover to Gone With The Wind looked like. The copy I read (loved, rechecked a million times, gave in and stole from the high school library, still have) is a hideous burnt orange with GONE WITH THE WIND stamped on the cover and spine in some butt fugly faux-western font.
But anyway. If ever a book needed a classic clinch bodice-ripping cover, that’s the one.
Walt, for The Science of Orgasm, I’d like to see a cover with some crashing waves and exploding fireworks… let’s see, what other cliches can we add to that… ahh, and Old Faithful going off in the background to commemorate all those men who spew like a geyser… and also somewhere a huge puddle of milk for all the women who come with a massive gush of cream…
Damn it, Bitches, I’ve been checking for the personal ad ALL FRICKIN DAY and now that I’ve got to leave, I bet you’re gonna post it. Grrrr.
The copy of Gone With the Wind I read had the picture from the classic movie poster on the cover. A clinch shot, but quite appropriate.
I think the ones I’d rush to recover are the bland ones, rather than the blatent mantitty. I’ve read some that were quite good, but the covers were just so generic—and not even romance-generic—that it would practically be better to have a cover that got snarked on here.
Amy E., I thought that was the original cover. Huh. I had the same as Molly’s—it was a lurid red, too.
My codeword is “farm69.” How does it know?
I have the same GWTW, but I also have a large photograph of a certain Mr. Gable sitting in a car, reading a much earlier copy. It’s not dated but I’m going to presume it’s around when the film was made, which was only three years after the book was published.
Okay, the photo of the photo didn’t come out well (excuse the flash), but you can see the cover:http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v208/etaknosnhoj/Picture001.jpg
I think that lurid orange was the original cover. The Gable ones date from after 1939, while GWTW was published in June 1936.