Pinch Hitting

Since Maggie's feeling under the weather, I thought I'd fill in with a cover I've seen a few times recently in the inspirational nonfiction section of our Local Grocery Chain™'s bookshelves. Behold, Here for You:


It ain't so ugly, maybe, but I swear that when you see this book in amongst others on the shelf, the topmost portion of the cover photo doesn't catch your eye, and you really can't tell that you've got a mom and her daughter sitting next to each on the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away. Maybe my mind's just a bit on the macabre side, but every time I've seen this book in the store my first thought has been "double suicide." Way to build those bonds, Mom.

You may be interested in knowing that Susie Shellenberger is editor of Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family's teen girl mag, Brio.

Well, olé!

Judging from the prominent (for Focus on the Family, at any rate) lack of mention of family in her author bios, I'm guessing that Ms. Shellenberger, besides being proud owner of a 150-pound St. Bernard named Bosco (a fact that figures in both bios that I read on her, here and here), is also batting for the other team, if you know what I mean (and I think you do). I find that very funny, given her stature in the Dobsonian universe.

sick

Hey y'all,

I'm under the weather. Since no one's actually RSVPed to meet me on Sunday I'm gonna go ahead and cancel the meetup. If you were just aching to go let me know and I'll reschedule.

More hideous covers to come soon!

Mailbag, lovely mailbag

Thanks to Lauren C., Stephanie H., and Your Neighborhood Librarian, P-dog, for the following suggestions. Seen a bad book cover? Send it to me at judgeabook(at)yahoo(dot)com.

Subtitle: When clipart gets colorized.

Ah, Baen, you're breaking my heart with these asterisks and ellipses! Let's fill in our own words, shall we?

"Superb...ly humorous attempt at actual writing..."
"hugely enjoyable...as a fire starter..."
"thrilling...when torn up for guinea pig fodder..."

As Lauren says, "Perhaps I can nail a review of the art to the publisher's door like a female Martin Luther without the religious ideals or the funky hat." Tell you what, Lauren. I'll buy the hammer.

Eeeek! Those eyes are freakin' creepy!!! But what I like most of all is the blurb from Best Sellers. It tells us that this book "Invites comparison to Tolkein's Lord of the Rings" Like, "Tolkein's Lord of the Rings is awesome. This book sucks."

Ack! Where'd her nipples go?! His seem to be missing, too. Guess the "primitive societies" don't need them.

Early Phallus

I'm gonna be in Morgantown, WV on Friday so I guess we can do Phallic Phriday a little early (which is better than my normal schedule, which is doing it a little late!).

I really like the Dresden books by Jim Butcher. Imagine Sam Spade as a wizard and you pretty much get the idea. Since I'm also (generally) a fan of "high fantasy" I figured I'd give Furies of Calderon a whirl. It was, sadly, pretty mediocre, but you didn't come here for my recommendations, right? NO! You came here for bad book covers. And Phallic book covers at that! Never let it be said that I disappoint my audience.

Yeah, like that's not trying to attract 14 year-old boys.

"Naked zombie-winds are attacking! I shall smite them with my rod of steel. My pointy-headed sword will take care of that!"

Hey, when something works, there's no shame in reusing it.

"My bulbous spear will certainly take care of these water lions!"

And again.

"I'm so manly I have two!"

Ooops!

Eeek, it's been a whole week. I swore I wouldn't do that to you again, and then look what happens! Bad Maughta! No biscuits for you. Erm...me. Damn, third person fucks me up again! This always happens late on Friday.

Okay, I'm waffling because, quite frankly, I don't actually have a book to post right now. Maybe tomorrow? I promise!!!

But I do have news! Everyone once in a while things happen in my life that have nothing to do with book covers (say it ain't so!). Mostly it's weird things happening at the reference desk. You ever want to see crazy people go to your downtown library on a full moon and watch the folks who come to the reference desk. Of course, you'll be one of the weirdos hanging out in the library on a full moon, too, so watch out! Anyway, I've decided to revive an old blog of mine, I Hate Asheville. Here you will find my various musings. Enjoy!

Since I've denied you a chance to laugh at bad book covers, here's my gift to you: The enormously funny "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. It's my new "favorite" blog! No, really, it is!

Also, since I've let the cat out of the bag that I'm here in the lovely town of Asheville (note to stalkers and secret admirers: I like chocolate), I figure it's a good time to invite all my closest readers to meet me and DocTurtle (if I can convince him) at Burgermeister on Haywood Road in West Asheville on Sunday, May 4th at 1:30pm for burgers, beers, and a big ole basket of onion rings. Drop me a line if you can make it!

And finally, on a more personal note, I've recently (after thirty some odd years) discovered my dream job. Did you know there's a thing called "Publisher's Reader?" I didn't! Apparently publishing people will pay someone to read their slush piles. Holy shit! Get paid to read? Sign me up! So if any of my publishing readers have some manuscripts just dyin' to be read, let me know. I prefer fantasy and mysteries and things I don't have to think to much to read (ugh, philosophy, yuck!), but I'll read anything that's fiction. Plus I work cheeeep!

Phriday is for Phalluses

Boooooooooooooooorn Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, as free as the dolphin between my leeeeeeeeeeeegs!

Sent in by Carrie

Once upon a time, when DocTurtle and I were first gettin' to know one another, we were on the phone when he said, "Excuse me, I have to go drain my pasta." As previously mentioned, I seem to have the mind of a thirteen year old boy residing somewhere in the back of my head, so I thought for sure he was telling me he had to go pee. Or, well, that he was very excited and had to go relieve the pressure, if you know what I mean (and I think you do!).

So what's your favorite euphemism for masturbating? Is it "spanking the monkey"?

Sent in by BikerPuppy

And finally, Legolas here seems to have, er, grown a bit...

Sent in by Writtenwyrdd

Is that a sword in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?

I wish I could have found a larger picture for this because then you could see that, on the right, is a naked woman with her back to us. Her mouth is, well, "appropriately placed", I guess you could say, to appreciate Legolas's sword, if you know what I mean (and I KNOW you do!).

More from the Mailbag

So faithful reader RichterCa was trollin' around the bookstores and happened upon some interesting covers.

I've got an under dog right now. Burnsie likes to try and crawl between me and the chair IN WHICH I'M SITTING making for a very squashed dog under my butt.

RichterCa suggests, and I agree, that the following really needs to be added to the Lord's Prayer. Lead us not into the Land of Zombies, but Deliver us from Wolves...

...and get this freakin' branch off my head!

So a while back I get an e-mail from TheCritic saying that I've just got to find a copy of the White Hotel because he'd given the book away but remembers the cover with some kind of serious fear and awe. Alas, I searched all over, but no luck. Yesterday I get an e-mail from TheCritic letting me know that the cover had SOOOOOO disturbed him that he went out of his way to track down his friend and have the cover scanned. Now you, too, can be frightened by the White Hotel (inside cover):




I....I....I'm just speechless. It's worrisome when the LEAST disturbing thing on a cover is a NAZI!



And finally, PH sends us what could quite possibly be the mascot of this site. It's an awesome cover (since when have merhorses, chartreuse, and fuchsia NOT gone together?) but I think you'll agree the title was made for Judge a Book.

Let's Do the Time Warp

Hey, kids! It's the long-lost sequel to Moonraker!

There are bad covers, and there are bad covers, but there's just something about science fiction that brings out the worst in a graphic designer. I'll bet there are some halfway decent stories in this volume, but you wouldn't know it from the front.

This book appeared in 1997, yet this image can't have been worked up any more recently than 1975. With the Farrah Fawcett hair and the classic Bond-girl pose, this chick is ready to boogie oogie oogie. Meanwhile, John Travolta's close personal friend Xenu is working on his night moves.

Um...where, exactly, is her other leg?

Let's Make Fun of Gilbert Morris!

I've decided that all of these books need new titles. I've take an stab at it, but y'all can definitely help!

The Cross-Eyed Real Doll

The Giant-Headed Midget

The Fifteen-Foot Bear

The Soulless Stare

(also known as The Missing Finger)

James Patterson, My Hero

So y'all remember a little while ago a colleague of mine made a list of the last lines of each chapter of James Patterson's newest phone-in, You've Been Warned?

And it was so funny that I posted it here? And remember how A Perfect World (making the world a better place one cartoon at a time) decided to draw a one panel cartoon for every line? Well, folks, she's up to chapter 42 now and there seems to be no stopping! I highly recommend you check it out. The Patterson strips start at #16 in the '08 archives. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!

Guest Blogger Snow

Faithful reader Snow sent the following e-mail to me and it needs no embellishment.

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Hi Maughta!

Visiting bookstores is so much more fun now. Whenever I see a snarkworthy cover, I whip out my cellphone and snap a picture. (It does sort of freak out the clerks, though.)

Since I feel like we're going though combined Baen and John Ringo withdrawal, here's a double hit.

What have we here? Boobs, pointed ears, big hair, mismatched shinguards, sword, bow, things dangling from "the great unknown", dragons, and what? spaceships! Of course. It all makes sense now. A cover entirely filled with teenage boy wank fodder.

Not to let teenage boys have all of the fun, here's wank fodder for the mature-ish woman.

It's not just smut, it's expensive, big fancy paperback smut. Why pay $4.95 for your cheap-looking one-handed read, when you can get a pretty copy for $13.95? Just look at those boobs, I mean pecs! They're nearly life-sized.

Come on, Maughta, put this one in your reading queue. I can't wait to see what Maughtamom would have to say.

- Snow

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Thanks, Snow! Readers, keep those suggestions coming.

Trash

So my Mom (the ever-popular commenter Maughtamom, for those of you who need obvious things pointed out, which I know is none of my super-smart and super-cool readers so this whole aside has been pointless) looks over to the sidebar at the random books from my Library Thing account and keeps asking me why I read such crap. I argue with her that, of course, taste is subjective and she's just wrong (as all mothers are at one point or another accused by their offspring), but then I find myself reading such tripe that I wonder why I even bothered wasting the time that could have been spent, I don't know, watching the ceiling fan spin and the dog hair collect in the corners of the room (an ever popular spectator sport in my house), and realize that my mom is, of course, right (don't tell her I said so!). And I've written the preceding two sentences (which may possibly be the longest sentences ever seen on this blog) because I find myself reading the book How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls by Zoey Dean.

It's a terrible book whose general premise is that rich bitches (think the Hiltons) are simply misunderstood and smart people who graduated from Yale with English degrees really just need to learn how to groom and dress themselves (and get the mandatory Brazilian wax). Why yes, that is the plot of every chick lit EVER now that The Devil Wears Prada has shown us how it's done. And I'm pretty sure that Zoey Dean doesn't actually exist (the author bio is scanty, there's no picture, and the book is copywritten by Alloy Entertainment which has its own nice little graphicon and a swanky address in New York).

But I know you didn't come here to get a literary review, you came here to see stupid covers, so here ya go:

I find it odd that we no longer need a chick on the cover of our chick lit, simply a shiny bikini and lots of bling. No nipples, though. That'd be too salacious. Never fear, although there is not actually a strappy high heeled shoe on the front cover there is one on the spine. Whew. For a second I though we'd forgotten the most important part of the cover. In case you're wondering, it took way too many people to design this cover; although I'm not sure if one should credit the cover designers listed on the back cover (the grammatically weird 3 Good, Poor Girls) or the gots-t0-be-a-pseudonym "book designer" listed on the inside page, Fearn Cutler de Vicq. Perhaps "book designer" is what they're calling ghostwriters now?

Oh, and Phoebe and Burnsie have informed me that since I mentioned their hairballs earlier I must post more pictures for their faithful fans. So for those of you who come here NOT for the funny book covers but for the gratuitous dog pictures, here you go.

Fabulous!

I've already picked on Choose Your Own Adventure books here. But they're just soooooo rife with hilarity that I can't help but bring them around for ridicule again.

First is a little something I like to call, Your Code Name is Phallic Whale

Next up is Perspective is Not in My Dictionary, otherwise known as I Went to the Longarm School of Art

And finally, saving the best for last, I present to you Gay Viking Holiday*

*Okay, I stole this last one from someone's live journal icon over at The Society for Librarians* who say Motherfucker, but it's just sooooooo perfect!

Chicken Shit

So I'm constantly jotting down notes to myself of titles and authors of books whose covers make me laugh. Sometimes I revisit these little scraps of paper eons later and wonder what the hell I was thinking.

Today I found a scrap of paper that said:

Jeff Long

The Descent

PREGNANT CHICKEN DEVIL

Yup. Pregnant chicken devil.

Just Returned to the Paperback Shelf

Haven't the green lizard people suffered enough? I mean, how much bowing and scraping does one hero need?! I personally thing taking guns to a trident fight is just poor taste. Poor drooly lizard people.

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Just a hint: when your book's FRONT cover looks more like a book's BACK cover, it's time to fire your cover designer.

Obviously geared toward the LONGARM fans, but without the gratuitous sex and violence. Which, really, takes all the joy out of it.

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And finally, for all you Phallic Phriday Phans (I pheel I've been neglecting you!):

Nuh UH! They did NOT just call her a SHEATH. Can you be any more obvious that your romance novel is about SEX?! Other titles:

The Train and the Tunnel

The Toad and the Hole

The Plug and the Socket

The Banana and the Hairy Clam

Help me out here!

From the Readers

Okay, so people seem to think that I was waaaaay off in the last post. Hey, what can I say, taste is subjective. But surely no-one finds the following covers (sent in by alert readers--keep 'em coming!) tasteful. Only subjective!

After seeing this cover, submitted by Amy, all I have a taste for is braaaaaaaaaains! Zombierific!

Faithful reader Jenna tells me that she saw someone furtively reading this book on the train. It reminded me of when I used to read bodice rippers in high school and would cover them with brown paper so people wouldn't know what I was reading. Which, now that I think about it, probably caused more eyebrows to raise than the cover itself!

I can't quite see on this screen, but I'm pretty sure that the little saying over the title says MISSION: Impassioned. My mission to you is keeping lunch down after seeing this!

And finally, a lovely contender for Mammary Monday (special Thursday night edition) sent in by Eunice. She tells me she went looking for this cover and stumbled onto http://www.goodgirlart.com/girlgangs.html. More mammary than you can deal with!

Gd, I love pulp covers! You go, Betty and Veronica!

What I'm Reading

So right at the moment I'm reading the Dante Valentine series by Lilith Saintcrow (surely a pseudonym, too fortuitous a name for someone who writes urban fantasy). It's a very good urban fantasy series and I enjoy it a lot. But I notice that after the first two books the publisher changed from Warner to Orbit (actually I've just discovered that it's still the same "Hatchett Book Group" so someone must have bought someone else out in the vast conspiracy to make sure there's only one book publisher on the planet, dammit!). Anyway, they also seem to have changed cover artists in the interim, so while the first two covers are scorching hot and rock:

Okay, the man in the flames is kinda cheesy and stupid, but can you go wrong with hot chick plus tattoo plus katana? NO!

My favorite aspect of this cover is that fact that the artist obviously read the book because this exact outfit was described in loving detail. Plus she's got a gun plus a whip plus a sword plus stilettos in her hair so she obviously kicks ass. I think the rendition is perfect, although I do wish the publisher hadn't included a blurb about the PREVIOUS book on the cover of this one, that's just bad form.

The last three simply suck. And that pisses me off. What the fuck happened? When did Danny turn into a transvestite? With some sort of creepy Rambo sword instead of a katana?? Someone really likes faux woodblock art. Blech. I wouldn't pick this book up if it were the first book. Bad artist! Bad! And so it continues:

The worst part of it is that they've re-published the first two books with the same artist who did the last three. Someone needs to get fired over this. Which would you pick up in the store?

Deal With This!

I want to have a large poster of this book cover. Then, when someone pisses me off, I can just point to it and say, "Hey, deal with THIS!" I don't know why this cover makes me just want to flash it at people, but it does. Perhaps it's the dippy belt.

Apparently Lucy Monroe "captures the heart of the genre," but I'd say she's capturing something a little lower than the heart.

Ya got a problem with that?! Hey, deal with THIS!

Naughty Nurses

So there's a restaurant in Denver that's one of my favorites. It's called White Fence Farm (funny story: When DocTurtle and I were first going out I talked about the restaurant to him and he thought I was saying White Friends Farm, which caused him to question my political leanings a bit...), and it has the best fried chicken and beets and bean salad and corn fritters ever. "Why in the hell is Maughta telling me this?" you may ask yourself. Well, self, the answer is that every January White Fence Farm closes for a month for "repairs and renovations" which is a fancy way of saying that they need to get new menus printed up with a new and exciting jacked-up price.

In that same spirit, Judge a Book took a little hiatus for the month of February to repair and renovate. And jack-up the prices. Well, not really, but in the spirit of keeping this blog ad-free I've added a DONATE button to the sidebar. Help Maughta buy more books. What else are you gonna do with your tax return?

But Maughta, you say, why have you tempted us with the title Naughty Nurses (take THAT, google safe search!) and then talked about nothing for two paragraphs? You're absolutely right! Let the Naughty Nurses roll!

First up is a little something I like to call TOO MUCH SHIT ON THE COVER!

We've got nine elements:
* Silhouette
* Desire
* 15 Years (in a banner)
* Man of the Month (in trendy font)
* Author as Seen on Primetime TV (let's hope it was on Cops)
* Author's name (no-one really cares)
* Itty-bitty little title (no-one really cares about that, either)
* A blurb by NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR JAYNE ANN KRENTZ! (community service, perhaps?)
* And finally, to pull it all together, Skanky-Ralph-Macchio as NURSE.

Wow, Cover Artist, how did you manage to fit that all on the cover of a little tiny paperback? And make it so fantastically lame? Well done.

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The following is a community service message: DO NOT BE TEMPTED TO SELF PUBLISH YOUR BOOK. People will only make fun of you.

This book is $20 on Amazon. I hope Leeanne has a lot of friends willing to shell that out.

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I'd choose to not stand by the smokestacks, myself. And to not wear that stupid collar. But seriously, how does a girl decide between a Sugar Daddy and a studly blond Doctor? It can't be done, I tell ya!

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The Beach Boys can only dream about such things. Oh, Laurie, don't lose your Doctor to the waves! Why else get your RN degree unless it comes with an MRS degree to a pretty MD? I hope a shark eats their faces. (Thanks, Eric, although perhaps I should have used this for Phallic Phriday?)

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And finally, a challenge for Nurse Genie and her chiropractor. A nice close-up of the creepy hands on the back there. (Thanks, Jeanne Genie!)

No Brainers

Some books just scream for us to judge them by their covers. Take the following cover, found by intrepid judger-in-the-field, Snow. As Snow points out, it's like Baen is doing this just to fuck with us. They're trying to see just how bad their covers could possibly be. Is Jim Baen's taste that bad? Apparently!

Y'know, as someone who's married to someone who's last name is slang for testicles, I feel for people with unfortunate names. But that's the nice thing about being an author. There's a handy little thing called a pseudonym that one can use if one wants to write, say, romance novels, and one's name is synonymous with sex! Y'know, if one didn't want to be, oh, I don't know, made fun of on a blog. Nina, you're the joy of fifteen year old boys, and bane of librarians, everywhere.

And what is going on with that woman, anyway? Is that some sort of chitinous shell? Are we morphing from a cockroach? Heh heh. COCKroach. BANGS. One BITE Stand. Heh heh heh.

And finally, a book that faithful reader Michael points out, "should be judged solely on typography:"