Reading Wednesday

[sabotabby]

 Just finished: Huff & Stitch by Cliff Cardinal. Stitch, unsurprisingly, is also brutal. Not quite as brutal as Huff but that's not saying very much. Maybe only half the trigger warnings. It's about a porn star and single mom trying to do right by her kid but it goes horribly wrong because of the way disasters tend to accumulate when you're marginalized.

Currently reading: Never Whistle At Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, edited by Shane Hawk. I've been wanting to read this for awhile (since I saw the cover last year) and it doesn't disappoint. There are a lot of authors I love in here and the overall quality of the stories is very strong. Interestingly, there are a number of authors who I think ordinarily don't write horror, which shows a bit, but overall very creepy and unsettling.

Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich. Sometimes I find Louise Erdrich books lying around, and I love her so I read them regardless of whether or not I know anything about the book. I just started this one and it's very good so far. It's a family saga with Erdrich's trademark stunning prose and note-perfect dialogue. Also it has one of the worst covers I've ever seen on a tradpub book, holy shit.

Comments

[dissectionist]

I actually quite like the cover, other than that the size/thickness of the lettering and/or coloring needs to be increased, because they’re difficult to read; they get subsumed into the background image because they aren’t bold enough or have enough contrast.

You have a trained eye and I don’t though, so what are you picking up about it that makes it one of the worst ever?

[sabotabby]

Oooh I'm so glad you asked!

Let's start with the image. Now, like I said, I will pick up a book by Louise Erdrich because it's by Louise Erdrich. I didn't know a thing about the book. This looks like an archival photo of an Indigenous family putting a canoe into the water. I can't really see any of their faces closely, or what they're doing, which doesn't make me identify with them or feel any emotion. It's an oddly distant photo, full of people, but we're not invited to identify or empathize with them.

Also, it's a black-and-white archival photo. This says really dull non-fiction to me. Again, I have read other things by the author so I know it's not that, but if I didn't know, I'd assume.

Next, the type. It's mostly unreadable, other than the title and author's name. The title would also be unreadable except that they've committed a sin of desperation and put a drop shadow under the red. They clearly knew they didn't have enough contrast, so instead of editing the photo, cropping it, or maybe using a better image, they just put a drop shadow on there and called it a day. The kerning on the title is also substantially wider than on anything else, for no reason that I can think of.

Finally the layout in general is muddy and lacks contrast or a focal point. Someone's shirt catches my eye first, and then I'm just confused and don't know where to look. If you shrink it down to thumbnail, it's completely illegible. Some of the type is squished to the margins, as if we're trying to shove it right off the page.

You could get away with a lot more back then because books were still paper, but even then, there were better options. This, for example, is a lot easier to read and the imagery feels more inviting.

[blogcutter]

I was thinking something similar. I actually like the cover better than most of the covers of Louise Erdrich books shown on that same page. Then again, I don't have any credentials as an arbiter of artistic merit, nor have I read this particular book!

[sabotabby]

See above!

She doesn't get great covers in general for some reason. I don't like that. Maybe I'll attempt a better cover for some of her books.

LaRose is my favourite of hers that I've read so far and the edition I have has a boring but serviceable cover. I went looking and this one is pretty good, I think! Not the route I'd go with it but the vibes are right.

[kore]

Oh, that's her first novel! Aww. I read it shortly after it came out.

[sabotabby]

Oh cool! I hadn't heard of her back then. Also I think I was like 6.

[frandroid]

I should read more anthologies. Perfect fit for my low-reading lifestyle.

*stares at boxes of unread zines*

[sabotabby]

Sigh.

I never used to read short fiction and now I read short fiction. Because tired.