Similar Covers: More Repeats

What I’ve got for you today is a bunch of covers some of you may recognize if you’ve been reading my blog for a while. All of them are “repeats”: covers I’ve featured before along with new exact matches...

First up, is a threesome of the same dandelion puff (with one reversed image): Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents by Allison Gilbert with Christina Baker Kline (Seal Press, 2006), The Wishing Year: A House, a Man, My Soul by Noelle Oxenhandler (Random House, 2008) and Dandelion directed by Mark Milgard (movie poster, 2004).

The Wishing Year was featured previously in Similar Covers: Dandelion Puffs.

Next, the same poor butterfly trapped in a jar three times: Predators, Preys, and Other Kinfolk: Growing Up in Polygamy by Dorothy Allred Solomon (WW Norton, 2003), Bone Machine by Martyn Waites (Pegasus, 2007) and Life Sentences by Laura Lippman (Harper Collins, 2009).

Both Predators, Prey, and Other Kinfolk and Life Sentences were featured previously in Similar Covers: More Butterflies.

Next, a threesome of the same dancing couple: Sights Unseen by Kaye Gibbons (Harper Collins, Jun 2005), Als die richtige Zeit verschwand by Günter Ohnemus (Droemer Knaur, Sep 2005) and Queen of the Underworld by Gail Godwin (Random House, 2006).

The two English books were featured previously in Similar Covers: Two Couples.

Finally, a threesome that is actually part of a larger set (see link below): The Professors’ Wives’ Club by Joanne Rendell (Penguin, 2008), Choral Society by Prue Leith (Quercus, 2009) and the ironically titled More Like Her by Liza Palmer (Harper Collins, 2012). Thank you to Gwendolyn (A Sea of Books) for sending me the third cover (and, if you haven’t already, check out her Ditto Doubles!).

The first two books were featured previously in Similar Covers: Women’s Legs (along with two other covers that use a very similar image).

The covers in each of these sets are so similar, but the threesome that dismays me the most is the last, since not only do they look almost the same, but they’re all contemporary women’s fiction!

Mailbox Monday (March 19)

Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books they received during the previous week. Warning: MM can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and huge wish lists! Mailbox Monday, which was started by Marcia (who now blogs at A girl and her books) is on blog tour—this month, it’s hosted by Anna at Diary of an Eccentric.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Mailbox Monday post, which I guess is a good thing, since it means I haven’t been adding to my out-of-control book piles... However, I did win a book recently, which has made its way to my home: A Cluttered Life: Searching for God, Serenity, and My Missing Keys by Pesi Dinnerstein. (With a title like that, how could I resist?!)

From the back cover:

Insightful, unsettling, and wildly funny, A Cluttered Life is the story of Pesi Dinnerstein’s quest to create a simple and orderly life—only to discover that simplicity is not so simple and what constitutes clutter is not always perfectly clear. in the end—with the help of devoted friends, a twelve-step recovery program, and a bit of Kabbalistic wisdom—her battle with chaos is transformed into an unexpected journey of self-discovery and spiritual awakening.

What did you find in your mailbox this past week? For other Mailbox Monday posts, head over to Diary of an Eccentric.

Similar Covers: Woman at the Window II

Jackie (Farm Lane Books Blog) recently posted the 2012 Orange Prize Longlist, which included a book with a familiar cover, Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick (Atlantic Books, 2011) . You might remember that I featured another book with the same cover image in a series of lookalike covers of a woman at a window: Fire in the Blood by Irène Némirovsky (Random House, 2008). I also found a third book that matches this set, Gen nicht so schnell in diese dunkle Nacht (Don’t Go Through That Dark Night So Fast) by António Lobo Antunes (Random House, 2004).

While I like the photo of the woman, I can’t say that I like the composition of any of these covers. If you look closely, you’ll notice there’s a vehicle outside the window in the first and third covers, which has been removed in the middle one.

I also featured Eden Close by Anita Shreve (Harcourt, 2004) in my original post, and I’ve since found a mirror-image cover: Unseen by Mari Jungstedt (Macmillan, 2006). Unseen is my favourite of all the covers I’m featuring today—the juxtaposition of the woman at the window in the foreground and the house in the background, with the title in between, makes for a mysterious and appealing cover that draws me in.

Finally, a whole new set:

• Je Suis Australienne: Remarkable Women in France, 1880-1945 by Rosemary Lancaster (University of Western Australia, 2008)
• Sashenka by Simon Montefiore (Belfond, Mar 2010)
• Die Familie Hardelot (the German translation of All Our Worldly Goods) by Irène Némirovsky (Albrecht Knaus Verlag, Nov 2010)
• Offenbach Romantique by Les Musiciens du Louvre (CD, 2007)

This last lot is kinda boring in my estimation—the only cover that stands out (though not for the right reasons) is Sashenka. The photoshopped head on that one looks bizarre to me!

Similar Covers: Hanging White Dresses

I recently spotted The Replacement Wife by Eileen Goudge (Open Road Media, 2012) which reminded me right away of Until the Real Thing Comes Along by Elizabeth Berg (Arrow, 2003). As it turns out, there’s also an exact match for the first cover: Life Is a Melody by Betsy Munson (AuthorHouse, 2008).

And while I’m on the topic of hanging white dresses, here’s another trio of them for you:

These are: Cennet Yolculari by Ayşegül Işık (2011), Mennonites Don’t Dance by Darcie Friesen Hossack (Thistledown Press, 2010) and Sinuciderea fecioarelor (the Romanian translation of The Virgin Suicides) by Jeffrey Eugenides (2005).

I can’t say that any of these covers appeal to me very much, although I am curious about Mennonites Don’t Dance... What do you think?

Review: Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear

Opening lines of the book:

“Maisie Dobbs shuffled the papers on her desk into a neat pile and placed them in a plain manila folder.”

Why I read it:

I read Maisie Dobbs, the first book in this series, a couple of years ago and loved it, so I jumped at the chance to read the second book during the March Is Maisie Month read-along.

What it’s about:

The year is 1930 and Maisie Dobbs, who calls herself a “psychologist and investigator,” has just been hired by a self-made businessman to find his runaway 32-year-old daughter. When three of the daughter’s friends are found dead, Maisie must dig deep to find out what happened to these women. Is the missing daughter the killer or the next victim?

What worked:

Jacqueline Winspear gets two things very right in this series. The first is Maisie herself. I love Maisie. I love her intelligence, her reliance on her intuition and gut feelings, her belief that coincidence is “a messenger of truth,” the fact that she meditates and that she can tell how a person is feeling just by imitating their posture. The daughter of a costermonger, Maisie was sent into service at age 13; however, she has also been educated at Cambridge and served as a nurse in World War I. As a result, she is now neither “upstairs” nor “downstairs,” which gives her a unique perspective on the world.

The second thing that Winspear gets right is the historical setting. I didn’t know much about this period before I read these books, but Winspear does an excellent job of portraying the cost of the Great War on civilians, nurses and soldiers alike. She also manages to make all her characters fully human—I felt for all of them, including the “bad guys” and unsympathetic characters. Having read these two books, I feel like I have a much better idea of what it would have been like to be living in England between the two world wars.

What didn’t work:

Because I reread the first book in the series just before reading this one, I found myself a bit dismayed that the end of Maisie Dobbs, which is so poignant, is recapped so bluntly at the beginning of Birds of a Feather. Mind you, I’m not sure I would have noticed this if I hadn’t literally just finished rereading the first book before starting the second.

[MINOR SPOILER]

I also found myself somewhat annoyed with the possible-love-interests plot points in this book: while it’s pretty obvious what the men in question see in Maisie, it’s not so clear what she sees in them. I found her interactions with them to be totally lacking in chemistry. I can’t help but hope that romance doesn’t become the focus of any of the subsequent Maisie books!

[END OF MINOR SPOILER]

Favourite quote:

“While she walked, Maisie remembered feeling a prickling of the skin on her neck while she stood in the upstairs hallway of [—]’s house, outside the room where her body lay. She had not shied away from the sensation but had instead silently asked, What is it you want me to see? Never before at the scene of a crime had Maisie felt such a duality of sensation, like a fabric that on one side is smooth and satin-like but on the other, rough with a raised pile. She knew that the last person who had come to the house came with a terrible burden, a burden that was no lighter for having taken [—]’s life” (p. 61).

Final thoughts:

Since I read the first two books back to back, I can’t help but compare them and I do think I liked Maisie Dobbs more (especially on second reading). However, Birds of a Feather is more of a classic mystery than the first one, and it kept me guessing until the end (although I did figure out the significance of one element of the story before the final reveal). If you are interested in World War I and the Interwar Period or just want to read a mystery series featuring a strong and quirky female sleuth, I highly recommend the Maisie Dobbs series. I generally never read books in series back to back, but I’m very tempted to dive into Pardonable Lies right away—I can’t wait to find out what happens to Maisie next!

_______________________________________________

To celebrate the hardcover publication of Elegy for Eddie (book 9, out on March 27, 2012) and the paperback publication of A Lesson in Secrets (book 8, out today), Harper Books is sponsoring the first annual March Is Maisie Month, which includes a TLC book tour of all the books in the Maisie Dobbs series thus far.

Visit these blogs for other reviews of Birds of a Feather:

The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader • A Few More Pages • Wordsmithsonia [spoiler alert!]

For a complete list of bloggers participating in the March Is Maisie Month read-along, visit the TLC Book Tours site.

Other reviews:

Booking Mama • Devourer of Books • Hey, I want to read that • Literate Housewife • nomadreader • She Is Too Fond of Books • Shelah Books It • The Written World • We Be Reading • Whimpulsive

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Similar Covers: Lone Tree

Well, it seems like I’m not quite back on the blogging horse yet, as a whole week has slipped by since my last post. (Sigh.) Still, when I read Karen’s latest Copycat Cover post over at Euro Crime, I couldn’t resist taking her up on her challenge... (In fact, she just commented that the tree appearing in the two covers she posted must have graced more covers than the ones she’d found.)

Here, then, are a few covers that match her two:

The books (and CD) are:

• Un écart de jeunesse (the French translation of No One Knows) by Nancy Price
• Four Dreamers and Emily by Stevie Davies
• The Moor Is Dark Beneath the Moon by David Watmough
• The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
• Ausgesetzt: Im Land der Seehundjäger (Suspended: In the Land of the Seal Hunters*) by Margareta Lindberg
• Dead Souls by Ian Rankin
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• Landscapes of the Mind: The Music of John McCabe by George Odam
  
• Mozart: The Wind Concertos by Christopher Hogwood (CD)

Be sure to pop over to Karen’s Copycat Cover post to check out the two covers that inspired this post!

*Title translation courtesy of Google Translate.

Similar Covers: Woman Dressed in Traditional Chinese Clothing

At the end of last year, I found the following email in my inbox:

“As you are an ‘[o]bsessed hunter of lookalike covers…’

Talk about a strange, unsettling déjà vu moment... on the left is the image for Amy Tan’s new short story, being touted as her first fiction in six years, about an aging courtesan and her protege in 1912 Shanghai. On the right [now in the middle] is the cover for a stunning, wrenching collection of brutal stories coming out of one of China’s most atrocious labor camps under Mao. WAAAHHH???!!!”

The email was signed Terry, Book Dragon.

So I present you with the evidence she sent me:

As you can see, I found a third (and earlier) cover that uses the same image. The earliest cover is actually my favourite of the three—although I like the cropping on the middle cover best, I dislike the fact that they added lipstick to the photo. (You can see the original photo here.)

Rules for Virgins by Amy Tan was published by Byliner as a Kindle Single in 2011; Woman from Shanghai by Xianhui Yang (translated by Wen Huang) was published by Knopf Doubleday in August 2009 (read Terry’s review at Book Dragon) and Women’s Movements in Twentieth-Century Taiwan by Doris T. Chang was published by University of Illinois Press in April 2009.

I’ve changed my mind about moving my “similar covers” posts to Thursdays—I will post about my first week of the meditation challenge tomorrow instead!

Mailbox Monday (February 6): The Birthday Edition

Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books they received during the previous week. Warning: MM can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and huge wish lists! Mailbox Monday, which was started by Marcia (who now blogs at A girl and her books) is on blog tour—this month, it’s hosted by Kim at Metroreader.

Twas my birthday last week and I received a few books as gifts, got a few books in the mail and bought a few myself (all nonfiction as it turns out).

My sis-in law gave me two books for my birthday: Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally Really Grow Up by James Hollis and Marriage Rules: A Manual for the Married and the Coupled Up by Harriet Lerner. (I’m a big fan of Lerner’s books and this is her latest, so I’m really looking forward to this one!)

I received an unsolicited copy of Speak to the Earth: Pages from a Farm Wife’s Journal by Rachel Peden (from Indiana University Press) and won a copy of Writing Yoga: A Guide to Keeping a Practice Journal by Bruce Black (from Rodmell Press).

And finally I bought myself two more books: Pay Attention, for Goodness’ Sake: Practicing the Perfections of the Heart—The Buddhist Path of Kindness by Sylvia Boorstein and Writing Down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within by Janet Conner.

What did you find in your mailbox this past week? For other Mailbox Monday posts, head over to Metroreader.