A new to me author

David Levithan was recommended to me a few weeks ago by a co-worker.  I had never heard his name before but looked into him and saw he wrote a book with John Green, who I am familiar with, and now I'm halfway through Will Grayson, Will Grayson.  I'll have comments for that book shortly but when I first started googling Levithan and learning about him all I could find was the cover for his new book coming in August.

It's not a good cover and, "You heard it here first," Knopf will change it before publication.  (Or at least I hope so.) 

This is worst type-setting ever.  The font; the color of the font; the absurd size of the font all need to go.  The image trumps the title, so the letters don't need to be so large.  (I'll forgo telling you how much the 'i's' dot above the lower portion of the 'y' makes me want to drown puppies.)  It's as if they what this extreme close up picture for shock effect but try to cover it up as best they can with the font.  If the title were printed in the smallest size possible we'd still know what this book was named...  The picture conveys the point; as such, it could stand to be zoomed out a bit.  While the font, and font size are awful there isn't any dead space to put the letters in a shot as close up as what Knopf is using.

The Fix Knopf should do:

Change the color of the font.  Do it.  Do it now!  Change the font to anything else.  Shrink the hell out of the font.  Zoom out and put the letters not-on-peoples'-faces.

The Fix they wont do:

Don't alter the image at all and remove all the text.  That picture is the title...   "Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan" on the spine would be just fine.   

That will never happen.  I could maybe see a European publisher do it, more so than an American one, but I don't think any publisher would be okay with no text on the cover. 

The Awesome and the Less Awesome

While scanning Amazon and drooling over books I can't afford, I was surprised to see that the pre-order mention for Arturo Pérez-Reverte's new book are up. (It's actually a few years old; only the English translation is new.)

The first thing that caught me as the badass title. (I'm currently swayed by the Levant's badassery due to reading Edward Whittemore's Jeruseleam Quartet at the moment.) After the title and thinking how awesome the story would be in the hands of the most capable author I noticed the font of the title and the author's name and placement--and loved them both. The above has me super stoked for this book.

Then I looked at the cover itself-from a distance if you will. I hate that dumb-ass picture; and the series had just recovered from travesty of blandness in, The King's Gold to the uber-awesome, The Caballero in the Yellow Doublet.

(Boring.)

(Said transitory awesome.)

Artwork aside--and no, I don't plan on a regular commentary on book covers--the king of all awesome was the only 'blurb' I could find about the book, Pirates of the Levant. Having read much of Pérez-Reverte's work before, I can't help but think this comes directly from the author himself:

This was a time when Spain was revered, feared, and hated in the easterly seas; when the devil had no color, no name, and no flag; and when the only thing needed to summon hell on earth (or sea) was a Spaniard and his sword.

September second is my new Christmas.