having just written a post about being coerced by an attractive book cover (see below), it's timely that there's an essay in the times about the potentially negative effect that bad cover art might have on a book's readability. joe queenan, having struggled to reread his gaudy copy of the adventures of huckleberry finn, has new ideas about judging books by their covers. queenan claims to have "recently scrutinized (his) library to see how many unread books had disgusting covers. the results were staggering." queenan doesn't do much to qualify or quantify his theory, other than stating that unappealing cover art appears to have a direct correlation, negatively affecting the reader's perception of the book. it makes me wonder which unread books i've got sitting on bookshelves back in wisconsin that i might like to chalk up to this theory. in a somewhat related cover art story, the guardian's book blog gives lip to some grumbling about newly rebranded editions of wuthering heights clearly aimed at suckling at twilight's teat.
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