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.