OH GOD WHEREFORE

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Oh, man, y’all, somebody in HarperTeen’s marketing department needs a raise.

Look what I shelved today:



That’s right. They Twilified Romeo and Juliet. And also Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre and a bunch of others.

Do you think this works? Does slapping a big red thing on a pitch black cover and typing in fancy font actually trick teenage girls (and frustrated housewives) into reading any damn book they’d previously spurned? Maybe we should try Gothing up the covers of books like On the Origin of Species and see if it’s true! I really see no downside to tricking people into reading that.

At least there’s some color on these, though. The YA novels are looking increasingly gloomy lately. Every cover is washed-out greyscale. Although that is starting to serve as a warning: if you see a grey cover, you’re safe in betting you’ll find a bland normal girl torn between her One True Love, who is TORMENTED because he is a demon/vampire/fallen angel/demigod/time pirate as well as a jerk, and some other red herring rival dude, who is also a jerk. It’s just when this cover style starts bleeding into books I like that we have a problem. Can you just picture Beka Cooper looking all sad and greyscale, with bright red rose petals falling from her hand? Or god forbid Tiffany Aching and the Nac Mac Feegle?

Okay, yeah, neither can I. Nor can I picture that with my own OGYAFE. But if it does ever happen, I suppose SOMEBODY will read them.

They just won’t know what hit them.

Comments

[tsita.livejournal.com]

See icon.

[beccastareyes]

I did like Twilight's cover design. Quite elegant and striking. But now that I associate it with the interior, I want to steer away anything remotely similar.

[renshai.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to picture Beka sad and greyscale with roses, but she really just looks annoyed, because picking the rose petals out of the crevices of her armour is going to take hours.

[pghbekka.livejournal.com]

Hee-hee! Love this image.

[anagramofbrat.livejournal.com]

...no.

just no.

OH GOD.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Actually, I rather support this brilliant idea - if they can trick people into reading good books, maybe they'll realize that reading can be awesome.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Hah. I'm actually with you on that--hence my suggestion that this happen to Darwin's books! The biggest problem is that I see those covers and think, "Oh, god, Twilight ripoff" and pass over them. If they start putting these covers on good books, I may miss them!

[baby-rissa-chan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've got whole swathes of reading material I don't tend to touch because the concept has been done to death in badly written fiction these days...Twilight related stuff, most Urban Fantasy of any sort...essentially the majority of the YA stuff that the bookstore stocks and a good chunk of the Fantasy section to boot since the bookstore tends to stock what's currently selling rather than a broad selection that covers a wider range of possibilities. I *have* found myself pleasantly surprised by a few of the books I've read within those genres, but the overall quality of the writing tends to make it hard for me to convince myself it's worth the effort of sorting through the junk. I'd hate to imagine how much harder it would be to find the good stuff if suddenly the covers weren't decent indicators of what you're likely to find inside.

Also? If you do happen to want to try out some interesting Urban Fantasy, I recommend Ilona Andrews. She has a really distinctive voice and I love her characters.

[daiq.livejournal.com]

As a high school teacher, I don't think it works... Although slapping a positive quote from Stephanie Myers on The Hunger Games Trilogy DID work and the kids are all raving about those at the moment (and i very much enjoyed them too, like harry potter - great storytelling if somewhat weakly written, i love me my HP ;) )

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

The True Forbidden Love: The Wintersmith

The Wintersmith mopes and sulks and refuses to release his hold on the earth because he knows he cannot have Tiffany, his true love. He knows she will be better off without him, but when Daft Wullie begins to court her, a battle ensues....

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

BWAHAHA. The Wintersmith is TORMENTED! Then along comes Arthur the dangerous but intriguing hiver, and Tiffany is drawn to him despite her unwavering love for the Wintersmith ...

Of course, that would only work if we got rid of Tiffany's First Sight and Second and Third Thoughts and replaced them with a bland ill-defined Special Specialness.

Probably that whole promise to marry Rob once the bird wears down the granite mountain would come into play, too. "But I PROOOOMISED!"

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

heh the Antishurtgual community has been discussing this for quite a while XD;

[tay421.livejournal.com]

Twatlight aside, with these beautiful flowers enveloped in the darkest shadows of their forbidden love covers, they look like they're all the same book, or at least the same series. The hell?

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Of course they are! They're in the ROMANTICAL ROMANCE series!

[van.livejournal.com]

Someone plz plz plz shop me a Twilight-esque version of "The Origin of Species"?

[pghbekka.livejournal.com]

Seconded!

[pghbekka.livejournal.com]

Ya know, I love me some roses, I really do. And I get wanting to capitalize on the freakish Twilight craze. But somehow, still...I can't sanction this.

Unless it was for On the Origin of Species, because THAT? Would be truly awesome. Also apropos.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Admittedly, I have my doubts as to whether Romeo and Juliet really IS good literature, but I know I'm in the minority there. ;)

[westrider.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on that one. I always saw it as more a tale of teen stupidity than true love.

Actually, that makes the Twilight association fit even better, now that I think about it.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Exactly. If you want to give it a generous interpretation, maybe it's got the same nihilism as a Coen brothers movie--Stupid People Blunder Around And Then Wonder What Happened.

Now I think about it, if you look at Romeo and Juliet like it's, say, Fargo, it brings a whole new meaning to the story.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that's what it's supposed to be. Especially if you recall that before he meets Juliet, Romeo is head over heels with some other girl.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I always thought that the mention of the lovely--uh, Rosamund? Rosalind? Rosasomething, I seem to recall--was rather a dead giveaway that this story was not quite the tale of Wuv, TWU Wuv that it gets made out to be. Sounds about right for a story of rampant teenage hormones, though.

Also, the part where his friends basically point out "Romeo, bro, you fall in passionate love like this pretty much every damn week" rather destroys his credibility. I'm sure he's quite sincere about his love until someone fresh and new walks by ...

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the point is "Get some perspective and don't let infatuation trump reality, kids, or you too may end up killing yourself in a panic over a stupid misunderstanding and seriously messing things up for everybody".

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

And also, "Feuds are dumb."

[daiq.livejournal.com]

I read a great paper when i was at uni that was based on the theory that R+J was ACTUALLY a comedy, while the death count is as high a Hamlet (another whinging teen), it is also full of those absurd Shakespear comedy moments like the fake death etc :D

[redbird57.livejournal.com]

I always thought it was a comedy. I remember sitting through several of his plays in high school, laughing , and thinking "I thought this was supposed to be a tragedy"

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, that theory makes me like Shakespeare a lot more. Hence my comparison to a Coen Brothers film. Those things can get ridiculously high body counts and still be totally hilarious. Mean, but hilarious.

[daiq.livejournal.com]

I am currently working on a production of R+J, and unfortunatly the director sees the play as the greatest tragedy ever told, and i am having trouble taking the whole thing seriously ;) I need to be careful what i say.

[sphynxle.livejournal.com]

I actually like the idea. I'm one of the people who DOES judge a book by the cover; a good/striking/pretty cover will want me to pick up the book and give it a look. So, if that's what it takes to get someone to read Jane Eyre? I'm ALL for it!

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Oh, totally. I just love how obviously it's exploiting Twilight--"The original forbidden love"? At least it's more creative than the Sticker Of Doom on all the YA fantasy a few years back ... "If you liked Harry Potter, you'll LOVE this!"

I totally judge by covers, too--but generally I am attracted to those splash wraparounds with a lot of detail, like James Gurney's work. Usually I can find something I like in a book like that.

[cysfics.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but the image of Beka Cooper with roses just leaves me laughing like a loon.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Trying for an Emo Beka just gives my brain a 404 Error. I can see her being sad, but emo? Not so easy to manage.

[tears-of-nienna.livejournal.com]

I hate those covers so very much. Why can't I just have my Pride and Prejudice with a saucy Regency lady on the cover?

And yeah, I am totally over the paranormal YA romances. I would like to see Edward Cullen try to seduce Beka Cooper with his sparkles. They'd find him days later, stumbling around covered in pigeon poo.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

It's not usually considered polite to mention, but when you really stop and think about it, Romeo & Juliet weren't really all that bright, were they? >_>

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

*grin* As far as I can tell it is a tale of two extremely melodramatic little tweens with pretty much no self-awareness or perspective. Which I can dig as a theme, but it doesn't really count as a romance.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

To be honest, part of me isn't entirely sure that the original point of it was supposed to be romance, and is puzzled by its possible modern reinterpretation as one. I suspect it might have been more of a warning: "If you're gonna be in love, don't be these guys."

Now a story about a place where a humanoid bird can love a humanoid fish, thst would beat the Capulet/Montague thing to me. :P

[gryphart.livejournal.com]

The cynic in me opines that publishers are doing their best to phase out everything but photomanipulated/stock photo covers regardless of content, as that way they can usually do it all in-house and/or keep cover costs cheaper.

(I also generally think that photo covers for fiction are unappealing and should get off my lawn, dagnabit, but alas, the pendulum is heading way the other direction.)

[kittikattie.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. Romeo and Juliet, the play that could have been happily ended if Text Messages had Been Around.

[chairman-wow.livejournal.com]

Those covers are so ugly, though.

It'd be interesting to see how much trendy cover design actually changes the sales of books.