Another interesting Guardian report: "... following the lead of a Canadian website, bookninja.com, we asked you to redesign classic books for a dumbed-down era ..." Here is the shortlist. See if you agree with the winner, a cover design for A Tale of Two Cities by Norman Smith. I don't find it very exciting. It looks like one of those travel guidesMy favourite is the Illiad by Homer, that is by Homer Simpson. Okay, call me philistine, but that book will sell in truckloads just for the cover, never mind if people don't read it. Pride and prejudice has a flag of the US on the cover. I didn't think that was very inspired. Too predictable. People are not buying George Bush books anymore. The Tom Sawyer cover says, "Please don't Auntie," and "An orphan's story that will both shock and inspire." I can hear the bookshop browser going, "Waaah! Sure go incest and sodomy, one!" The design is sufficiently prurient but not colourful enough.
Then The Lord of the Rings looks like a cookbook. There are 21 cover designs in all. Take a look at all of them at the website below. You will find more books by Charles Dickens, Graham Green, Ernest Hemingway, William Golding and many more. James Joyce's The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man -- "a coming-of-age prose-poem" -- cover will not look out of place in the bodice-splitting romance section.
See them all.
The Guardian
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