I thought it might be neat to include a discussion of cover art in my thesis.
Of course, I only just came up with this idea, so I haven't been making notes about covers as books have passed into and out of my hands.
So I thought: an Amazon search!
God, I hate myself.
First I did a search, and just looked at the top twenty pages of results -- I got some good stuff, but I know I wasn't getting everything.
So I switched to a "literature" search, arrange by publication date. I'm on page 24 of who knows how many -- Showing 277 - 288 of 3,128 Results. I'm only on August 2006.
Oh, well, not like I had anything better to do tonight.
ETA: I stopped at page 56. I was going cross-eyed.
2 comments:
So how did you get Amazon to sort for Cover Art - and covers of what? Chaucer? And are you looking at cover changes over time? I once saw a paperback version of Sherlock Holmes with a bodice-ripper cover that was astonishing - Holmes would have been taken aback and Watson would have swooned over the fair damsel's distress. We CAN (and always DO) judge a book by its cover, but often inaccurately. I would like to hear more about this project.
Alas, I did not get Amazon to sort for cover art -- I just looked at the little pictures. 56 pages of little pictures.
I am looking at Canterbury Tales covers. I found a copy of the Everyman edition that was really intriguing -- it was a medieval picture from the Romance of the Rose, featuring a naked man and woman in bed; the woman is trying to entice the man, but he's not interested.
http://www.amazon.com/Canterbury-Tales-Everymans-Library-Paper/dp/0460870270/ref=sr_1_1/104-5467951-6852717?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193170151&sr=8-1
I love it -- it's a clearly medieval image, yet it feels very modern. I decided to investigate what other covers of the CT look like -- copies from within the last 10 years or so.
It's been. . .well, interesting. Ish.
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