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| Hearsay: |
[BUMPED AGAIN]
[There'll be an article in tomorrow's Toronto Star Ideas section that highlights the contest and includes some of the covers you sent in! Check it out, and remember to vote if you haven't already, by SENDING AN EMAIL at the link below! Clear favourites are starting to emerge.]
I bumped this up to remind you to , and to send you to this link where someone has done something similar, except exactly opposite: taking existing romance covers and providing them with new titles. Funny as HELL!
Well, you guys rock. Thanks for sending in. I can’t obviously choose all of the entries, and there were many many more, but I tried to pull out a representative sample and include some new ones you haven’t seen yet as well as those already posted. Here’s how it will go: by Friday you should send me your top three picks from this list, in order of preference, to . I’m headed to Ontario for a family visit as of Saturday morning, but I’ll tally over the weekend while I’m away and try to post something for Monday of next.
The entries you haven’t seen are at the top and all the others are thrown in below. I’ll release the names of the designers after the contest is over. If you don’t want your name attached to your entry, . Choose wisely!
[All the entries are after the jump at the "more" link below]
Ah, no one knows the beauty of a good pinot like Thomas Pynchon…
Personally, I think Leonard might have approved of this cover…
The horror… the horror…
Fantastic reimagining.
This one wrote itself, methinks.
I didn’t see this coming, but the blurb pulls it all together.
For all your unspeakably evil puzzle needs…
Again, the title just loaned itself out, dinit?
Perfecto!
I laughed, I cried, I plotzed.
Poor Margaret really gets it today. But her titles do lend themselves rather well to this exercise.
I like how this one alludes to the one above. A series!
Of course, this is from her other series, currently in it’s four millionth printing.
A little something for the kids.
Ah, remember when I said to take it to the edge? Herewith: The Edge.
I really truly didn’t see this one coming. It was like a punch in the gut. Which is how you know it’s good satire. The endorsement blurb is especially telling.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, may actually be my favourite so far. I love it on so many levels it almost makes me weep with gratitude that it was sent in. Cormac’s The Road as parenting book. I’m just so happy.
Poor Margaret Laurence is getting picked on, but as Canada’s reigning queen of required high school reading, you can see why. Here we see The Diviners in a whole new light. One shone under the chin at a campfire. A sort of Blair Witch Laurence.
I know I’m supposed to laugh at this one, but dolls really do creep me out. Yeesh. I like how this an the last have those ubiquitous Stephen King blurbs.
And I don’t even know what to make of this next one, but it’s creepy too.
Sinclair Ross’s pious prairie classic as home repair manual.
This is just wrong on so many different levels.
And on a more “serious” note: Canadian policiatl memoir as pulp scifi. Nice.
This one made me laugh out loud.
Finding love through the short story. It’s the “with Constance Garnett” part that cracks me up.
A roll in the hay? Ah, from the straight-up het romance ouvre of Anne Marie MacDonald… I particularly like the naked dude in the itchy straw. Who could forget the kinky shoulderblade sex scene? Nice touch.
Does this one need any introduction?
A political confederacy…
A classic for helping your children to learn about existential crisis.
Cormac McCarthy as Gay Porn
Yann Martel as 1970’s Cookbook
Experimental poetry book Eunoia as self-help/business management guide
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October 20th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Great work all around! Now to select my faves… this will be difficult.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
I think they’re all amazing, but I gotta say that The End of the Alphabet is just too darn cute. And well, I’m a sucker for cute. (Fifth Business and The Pest House are pretty awesome too).
October 20th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
I guess it’s too obvious, but i’m voting for Fall on Your Knees anyway.
October 20th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
It’s gotta be ‘The Road’ a la parenting cover.
October 20th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
If I could take the Cormac McCarthy mashup one step further and create a Parenting Guide for Gay Cowboys, I, uh, might actually like him. (ha ha)
October 21st, 2008 at 12:10 am
Gotta be The Road. Most of the others are simply puns – very funny puns, but not related to twisting the actual story itself. The Road cover turns it into a heartwarming road trip between father and son, a spin that only a media/marketing consultant could come up with.
So my vote is with The Road! (Second choice: the Alias Grace cocver — same reason, though it’s not laugh out loud funny in the way The Road is.)
October 21st, 2008 at 2:54 am
“The Kiss” cos it’s just so low key odd, and the man looks eerily like Bill Bryson tidied up.
For laugh out loud “The confederacy of dunces”
October 21st, 2008 at 4:43 am
Remember to send your votes in by email to and list your first, second and third favourites. I’ll be tallying them from there. I have to create a bloody spreadsheet to figure it out.
October 21st, 2008 at 6:36 am
all are great. Can’t wait to see folks reading atwood’s the handmaid’s tale on the streetcar.
but I have to vote for Robertson Davies Fifth Business. Close second is Martel’s Life of Pi.
congrats to all you future Random House publicists
October 21st, 2008 at 7:43 am
I rarely laugh this loud on a Tuesday morning, let alone any morning. This is hilarious from start to finish. My vote goes to “Fall on Your Knees” followed closely by “as for me and my house”. Too funny.
October 21st, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Omg! The Necronomicon as a puzzle book! LOL! Loved how “cthulhu” was already filled in. >D
I thought the puzzle book and The Road were the best entries. I expected a bit more of the same over-the-topness, but good submissions at any rate. ^^
October 21st, 2008 at 6:52 pm
These are genius. But if I have to pick one, it’s “The Road” as a parenting book. Wow.
October 21st, 2008 at 7:07 pm
I like the one with the hot Asian Mexican chick. None of the rest had hot babes. What kind of contest is this?
October 21st, 2008 at 10:00 pm
So many to choose from! But I love the quote from Samuel Marchbanks on Fifth Business, so I’ll vote for that one. Brideshead Revisited is both confusing and creeping me out.
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:29 pm
The best compliment I can pay to all who submitted covers is that choosing merely three is so difficult.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:16 pm
I’m pretty keen on The Handmaid’s Tale – followed by The Road and Blood Meridian. Oh, and Fall On Your Knees. Goodness.
October 24th, 2008 at 10:11 am
As usual, Sophie, sex sells.
October 24th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
For a near-perfect match between the title itself and the new artwork:
The Road
A Complicated Kindness
As For Me and My House
with To the Lighthouse and JPod as close contenders. Fall on Your Knees is great, but too easy a target …
October 25th, 2008 at 2:30 am
As someone who has spent far too much time reading about and thinking about Diefenbaker, I have to say the Rogue Tory cover is some kind of weird perfection. Where did that picture come from?
October 25th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Is the article in the Star? I can’t see it online and not being in Canada, I can’t check the print version.
October 25th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
It is in the paper. The Ideas section. But they only used five covers instead of the seven they asked for. Space limitations, I would guess.
October 25th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Which covers did they use? Again, I can’t get the paper.
October 25th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
I just barely saw it, but I think it was JPod, Fall on Your Knees, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Life of Pi and Barney’s Version. I had written a little intro to go with it. It was very much a sidebar type-thing.
October 27th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Wonderful! — Publishers may want to consider these covers for their catalogues. If you’re still accepting votes….#1 Beautiful Losers, #2 The Diviners, #3 To the Lighthouse
October 28th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
I liked the ones I recognised, but didn’t know most of them. One of the disadvantages of being a 17th C English playwright, of course.
My particular favourites are the covers pushed out in the mid-60s to early 70s with pouty girls with Bardotte lips and Raquel Welch (in)decolatages. Particularly when the books concerned are classics. I’ve blogged about them myself and (at the risk of being considered a spammer) you can find some examples by following the link behind my name.
Fun and inventive post you have here. It’s put a smile on my face.
All the best
Aphra.
March 8th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Barney’s Version is the funniest.