Sean over at the LNR Books diary has a hilarious post today on judging books by their covers and the Booker Shortlist books. It’s a two part post and in the first one he dissects the covers of The Master, Cloud Atlas, and Bitter Fruit. I thought it might be a good idea to do the same to the American versions, as they most often change the covers completely. The problem I ran into was finding pictures of all the books. I’ll Go to Bed at Noon by Gerard Woodward and The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall remain elusive still.

The Master by Colm Toibin: Some sort of Turner picture on the cover here. Nice and bland as far as I am concerned.
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst: A nice simple cover picturing a street through a gate? I don’t know. My computer here sucks. It’s a pretty picture though.
Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor: I don’t know what the hell is going on in this cover. Like I mentioned before, crappy computer, but I imagine its some sort of fruit? Bitter perhaps? Who knows. The worst of the lot so far.
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell: As you can see, I could only find one rather smallish picture of Cloud Atlas. The pictures are either too small or too big. The American cover is way better than the UK edition. Ours has 6 images of clouds in various colors, the 6 referencing the story I imagine. It’s nice.
So far, I think The Line of Beauty has the best cover. Any opinions? My discussion is not nearly as creative as LNR’s I realize. Sorry, it’s Friday and I am lacking wit and verve today.