Similar Covers: Reflections

I was a bit shocked to come across these two oh-so-similar covers with oh-so-similar titles while browsing the Fantastic Fiction website recently. Playing Dead by Julia Heaberlin and Playing with Matches by Carolyn Wall are not only both due out this year (in May and July, respectively), but they are also both being published by Random House!

To be fair, it seems like someone caught on to the duplication because Playing with Matches now has a new cover, according to Amazon (and the author’s site).

For another post about similar covers that resemble these two, see also Cover Curiosity: Seeing Double over at 100 Scope Notes.

Similar Covers: Red Dress, Red Shoes

I’ve got lots of foreign covers for you this week, but otherwise these six are depressingly similar...

They are:

• Dannati e leggeri (literally, And Damned Light) by Paolo Crepet (Einaudi, 2004)
• Les ombres de la nuit (French translation of Places in the Dark) by Thomas H. Cook (Livre de Poche, 2005)
• La Isla de los Amores Infinitos (translated as The Island of Eternal Love) by Daína Chaviano (Grijalbo, 2006)
• De père inconnu (French translation of Father Unknown by Lesley Pearse
  (ArchiPoche, 2008)
• Second Chances by Martina Reilly (Little, Brown, 2009)
• My Brother’s Book by Jo-Anne Richards (Macmillan, 2011)

I can’t say I like any of these covers—the only one that vaguely appeals is the third one, but I wouldn’t be drawn to pick any of them up. What do you think?

Similar Covers: Boy and Girl Reading in Canoe

I can often count on finding at least one familiar cover among LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers books, and this month’s batch was no exception. Safe Within by Jean Reynolds Page (Harper Collins, 2012) is about to be published with a cover image that has been used at least three times before, on the following books: Book Crush: For Kids and Teens—Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Interest by Nancy Pearl (Sasquatch Books, Mar 2007), Songs of Ourselves: The Uses of Poetry in America by Joan Shelley Rubin (Harvard University Press, Apr 2007) and Toolkit for Teachers for Literacy by Diane Hood Nettles (Pearson, 2006).

I can’t say that any of these covers seems particularly interesting to me—there’s a blandness about them that would probably not inspire me to pick them up. (Nancy Pearl’s book might be the exception as it’s about reading and meant for teens, so the cover works quite well, but obviously is not meant for me.) What do you think?

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!

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?

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!