Similar Covers: Little Girls

I have a couple of exact-match cover collections to share with you today. The first is one that I’ve been collecting for a while now (including one CD cover):

• Black and White by Dani Shapiro (Tantor Media, May 2007)
• Fault Lines by Nancy Huston (McArthur & Company, Aug 2007)
• Finding Normal: Memories of an Abusive Childhood and a Journey Through Psychotherapy by Debra Curreen (Summersdale Publishers, Feb 2008)
• Los hijos del Ararat (The Children of Ararat) by Marc Morte (Ediciones Carena, Feb 2008)
• WomanChild: Heal the Wounded Inner Child by Jan Duncan (Enhanced Healing, date unknown)
  

I can’t say I like any of these covers—that little girl is a bit creepy!

While I was looking up the above books on LibraryThing, I came across another cover for Fault Lines, which looked very familiar (and which matched another couple of book covers I’d found recently):

• Borrowed Finery: A Memoir by Paula Fox (Henry Holt, 2001)
• Co widziały wrony (The Way the Crow Flies) by Ann-Marie MacDonald (Świat Książki, 2006)
• Fault Lines by Nancy Huston (Text Publishing, 2007)
• Hidden Wives by Claire Avery (Forge Books, 2010)

My favourite of these is the first cover; the others, which include the empty room, make the girl look even sadder (and somehow are less appealing). Gwendolyn (A Sea of Books) had already found another cover to go with these four: check out her Ditto Doubles post to see it.

Really Random Tuesday: October Read-along of Wherever You Go by Joan Leegant

After co-hosting read-alongs for both Blackout and All Clear this summer, Carrie (Books and Movies) and I decided to read another book together in October: Wherever You Go by Joan Leegant. I hope some of you will join us!

Since this book is short, we’ve decided to post discussions only twice, once midway through the month and once at the end. If you decide to read the book, you can either join us for both discussions or drop in on the last one only, book-club style, for the final discussion.

The author, Joan Leegant, has also offered to participate in the read-along in the form of a guest post and author interview. Stay tuned for more details!

Here is the (revised) read-along schedule:

October 1: Start of read-along

October 15: Discussion post on chapters 1 to 11 (pages 3 to 126) on Carrie’s blog

October 22: Guest post by author Joan Leegant on this blog

October 29: Discussion post on chapters 12 to 43 (pages 126 to 253) on this blog

October 31: Deadline for submitting questions to Joan Leegant

November 5: Interview with the author on Carrie’s blog (based on questions submitted by participants)

The page numbers I’ve provided are from the paperback edition, but since the hardcover book has the same number of pages, I presume the pagination is the same. (In any case, this book has numbered chapters, for once!)

If you would like to join us, please sign up with the Mr. Linky below:

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Really Random Tuesday is hosted by Suko at Suko’s Notebook. Feel free to join in, copy the button and link back to Suko’s blog.

Mailbox Monday (September 26)

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 Amused by Books.

I knew I was forgetting a couple of books last week! The two I forgot are Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness by Sharon Salzberg (which I bought because I’m planning to go to Kripalu in October on a retreat taught by Salzberg and Stephen Cope) and Sweat Your Prayers: Movement as Spiritual Practice by Gabrielle Roth (which I bought after reading about 5Rhythms on Meg’s blog, Spirit Moves Dance).

This week, I received two books in the mail from William Morrow: Falling Together by Marisa de los Santos (which I’m super excited about reading—I loved Marisa’s first two novels) and Wishes & Stitches by Rachael Herron (which is an unsolicited review copy, so I’m not sure it will be my cup of tea).

From the publisher’s website:

What if saying hello to an old friend meant saying goodbye to life as you know it?

It’s been six years since Pen Calloway watched her best friends walk out of her life. And through the birth of her daughter, the death of her father, and the vicissitudes of single motherhood, she has never stopped missing them.

Pen, Cat, and Will met on their first day of college and formed what seemed like a magical and lifelong bond, only to see their friendship break apart amid the realities of adulthood. When, after years of silence, Cat—the bewitching, charismatic center of their group—emails Pen and Will with an urgent request to meet at their college reunion, they can’t refuse.

With her trademark wit, vivid prose, and gift for creating authentic, captivating characters, Marisa de los Santos returns with an emotionally resonant novel about our deepest human connections. As Pen and Will struggle to uncover the truth about Cat, they find more than they bargained for: startling truths about who they were before and who they are now. They must confront the reasons their friendship fell apart and discover how—and if—it can ever fall back together.

From the publisher’s website:

It has always been Naomi Fontaine’s dream to practice small-town medicine—an ambition that brought her to Cypress Hollow, the charming, tight-knit community her late friend, knitting guru Eliza Carpenter, loved so well. But no matter how hard she tries, Naomi can’t seem to fit in here. Then rugged Rig Keller moves in to take over half of Naomi’s medical practice, and instantly charms everyone in town... including Naomi.

Rig saw what a broken relationship did to his brother, and has no interest whatsoever in getting serious. But the temptation to play doctor with his new partner is just too strong to resist. Any chance they might have of being truly knit together by love, however, depends entirely on what secrets they are willing to reveal... and on Rig’s willingness to risk his heart and Naomi’s desire to open hers completely.

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

Similar Covers: Figures on Pier

On Monday, I spotted a familiar-looking book cover on Leslie’s blog, Under My Apple Tree, so I plugged the image into TinEye. And what a popular cover it turned out to be! (I’ve put the books in order of publication, with the CD last.)

• Op de rug gezien by Margriet de Moor (Oct 2007)
• Letter from Point Clear by Dennis McFarland (Thorndike Press, Jan 2008)
• It’s Me, It’s Me, Oh Lord by Eunice Rhames Lewis (Tate Publishing, May 2008)
• Bridge Across Atlantic by Ibe (AtlanticRock.com, Jul 2008)
• Propositions on Christian Theology: A Pilgrim Walks the Plank by Kim Fabricius (Carolina Academic Press, Sep 2008)
• Handbook to the Afterlife by Pamela Rae Heath (North Atlantic Books, Apr 2010)
• Fare Forward by Wendy Dubow Polins (Hamilton Hall Press, Sep 2011)
• When You Can’t Wait for Tomorrow by Tom Wehrle (CD released in 2007)

As if that wasn’t enough, very similar images (same pier, slightly different angle) are used in four other instances:

• Emergency Response Handbooklet: Depression by Group Publishing (Group Publishing, Dec 2007)
• The Magic of Self-Acceptance: How to Be Happy by Michael Sharon (Book Guild, Feb 2008)
• Christian Formation Counseling by John Pugh (Tate Publishing, Aug 2008)
• Releasing Anxiety Guided Meditation MP3 by Total Balance (date unknown)

I do find the first photo quite striking—I especially like the CD cover—and it’s true that many of these titles are fairly obscure, but this still seems like overkill. And it’s pretty weird that Tate Publishing published two of these titles with very similar covers!

Mailbox Monday (September 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 Amused by Books.

It’s been weeks since I’ve done a MM post, so I’m afraid I might be forgetting a few of the books that have crossed my doorstep in the last month or so. Anyway, there are the four I do remember...

First, I received two books from my Canadian Bookshelf contest win: Breakfast with Cora: An Autobiography by Cora Tsouflidou (translated by Dawn M. Cornelio) and Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel. (The latter is a book I’ve already read and reviewed.)

Next, my mother gave me a book of poetry, The Unsettled: New Poems by Mona Fertig. I also received a review copy of Wherever You Go by Joan Leegant for my next read-along with Carrie at Books and Movies.

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

Similar Covers: Bridal Bouquet on Chair

While I was away on vacation, a new-to-me blogger, Meg (Meg’s Book Shelf) commented on one of my old “similar covers” posts (“Barbie Dolls and Cinched Waists”), suggesting a new lookalike for that post (which I’ve now updated). I, of course, checked out her blog, where I came across a another cover that looked familiar: Necessary Arrangements by Tanya Michna (Signet, 2007). After plugging the image into TinEye, I found three matches:

• Sitting Practice by Caroline Adderson (Headline, 2004) (read my review)
• The Bride’s Handbook: A Spiritual & Practical Guide for Planning Your Wedding by Amy J. Tol (Revell, 2005)
• Le marié est trop beau (literally, The Bridegroom Is Too Handsome) by Valerie McGarry and Patrick de Bourgues (JC Lattès, 2006)

I dislike all these covers (though the French one is the worst by far; what’s up with the awful colour of the chair?). What do you think? Would you pick up any of these books based on its cover?

Really Random Tuesday: I’m Back...

Hello my lovelies, how are things? It feels like I’ve been away forever (and it has been about a month since I went on vacation!). What have I missed? I marked all 1000+ posts in my Google Reader as read (something I normally never do), so let me know which of your posts I need to read, please!

In other news, you may have noticed that I’ve tweaked my blog layout a bit. I liked the book background, but too many other folks used it, so for now I’m going with plain orange. What do you think? I want to reorganize the columns too, but that seems more daunting... I also made the whole blog wider—is that a problem for any of you?

Finally, Mr. B has offered to buy me an e-reader! (He’s hoping that will curb the influx of books into the house.) I know many of you have one (and some of you have even written posts about them)—what are your recommendations? Thank you in advance!
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Really Random Tuesday is hosted by Suko at Suko’s Notebook. Feel free to join in, copy the button and link back to Suko’s blog.