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Newest - Highway to Hell - DREEEEEEW!
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Judge a Book by Its Cover #1
A Review by Drew McEleney
We have all heard the old saying – passed down from our mothers, fathers, and public television – “Don’t
judge a book by its cover.” This is indeed a good saying, right up there with the golden rule (rock hard
or go home). We should not be too quick to categorize a person based on outward appearances without first
getting to know her. All this is well and good but what if you take the deeper meaning out of the quote?
If you are standing in a Borders® or Barnes and Noble® (or in a library if you like to “check out” books)
staring a shelf of books in the face you must judge a book by its cover. In fact you have to judge it by
its binding because you (like me) are just too damn lazy to remove the book from the shelf for a closer look.
So that is the (Sega) genesis of this article. I will save you the hassle of reading crappy fiction
by literally judging books by their covers and passing on my oracle of knowledge to you the enlightened
Xtremewailing.com reader.
A Snappy Dresser
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First up is a book called A Prison Diary by Jeffrey Archer. Let’s begin with the front cover
as this seems to be a pretty good place to start. First off there is a tagline at the top that reads
“By the New York Times Bestselling Author of Sons of Fortune,” I am guessing that Mr. Archer
(or Sir Archer or whatever title they use to refer to the Brits) wants to convey to his potential customer
reassurance that he is a talented author. This may be true but I have no knowledge of the book Sons of
Fortune which is probably his 10,000th spin-off of his earlier work - Kane and Abel - which he
wrote in 1979 so the marketing didn’t work on me. Next we see the authors name emblazed in 42 point font
all capitals – JEFFREY ARCHER. Ok I get it; He is the guy that wrote the book. The last bit of text on
the cover is the bright red block lettering “A Prison Diary” which is slanted up and to the right to look
like a stamp. I mean c’mon! Do you think I believe that they took each book and stamped it with an ominous
warning just to get me to read it? If that is the case I am sold, it makes me want to start reading right
away. The last thing to mention about the cover is Archer himself – they used one of those artistic black
and white half photos showing only his nose to his right ear. It looks like the photographer ran out of
film or the publisher ran out of budget. Unfortunately he isn’t in prison garb which would have been way
cool. English dudes in orange are all the rage these days.
Next the spine – nothing worth mentioning here, let’s have a look round the back.
The back cover is very Spartan, only black and red text (in the form of our old friend the fake red stamp)
and some obligatory blurbs that Archer forced lame-o newspapers to write. The quotes are presented under
the humble title “International Praise For (Red Stamp).”
So that is the cover of this week’s book. I would give it 4 out of 7 starts because Archer appears
tough on the cover and he was an MP (as in Member of Parliament not Military Police). Just remember one
thing - the toughest guy in a British prison would be the dude serving tea in San Quentin.
If you think you
have a book that needs a little hasty generalization by yours truly please contact me directly at
drew@xtremewailing.com.
All editions of Judge a Book By Its cover
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