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Recent Posts Saying goodbye to Clive Cussler |
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| Cover comparison: The Silent Sea | 6th March 2010, 11:51 | |
 The Silent Sea is a forthcoming (next week) release in Clive Cussler's Oregon Files series. Above you can see the US cover on the left, and the UK cover on the right. I've often wondered about why the publishers really find it necessary to release the books with different covers, so thought I'd have a go at comparing the two. It's particularly Cussler I've noticed this with in the past, but clearly it's true of a lot of novels. With these, the actual inside of the books seems to be the same - the cover page on the interior of the UK editions has a title font that matches the US cover font at least. So I assume that the book itself is just imported without the cover - this make a little sense, as the book itself is unlikely to be damaged in transit whereas the paper dust-jacket is. But if it was just about printing dust-jackets locally the same design could easily be used. The UK Cussler covers have also had change to the font a couple of years ago, from a serif font to the current soft and blocky sans-serif version seen above, and they are re-releasing the paperbacks in the new style. But that's just a note for background. From a quick inspection there seems to be little point to issuing these covers differently apart from the need to match the existing brands in each country - but given that the UK brand has recently changed I think this can be discounted, as it would have been just as easy for the UK editions to have been rebranded to match the US versions... therefore the only real need must be for marketing purposes. Not being in the US, I'm not really qualified to comment on how they perceive Cussler, but the impression I get in the UK is that his writing is seen as a less than serious thriller series. Reflecting this, the UK cover looks to me less serious - the US cover makes it look like a harrowing tale - the colour of the sea seems much more realistic than the colour of the sky in the UK version - and the detail of the ship and the fish around it are more realistic. The UK image is more stylised, and doesn't suggest to me that it is meant to reflect an actual scene from the novel, but instead is more of a poster suggesting the content. The US image of a shipwreck suggests a sense of mystery, perhaps of treasure hunt, whereas the UK edition's depiction of a ship afloat suggests an adventure. Again this reflects the UK view that Cussler writes romps rather than serious tales. The text chosen for the covers is interesting. As seems to be the norm now, the author's name is the largest thing - although I like to think that Clive Cussler is now just a brand (much like Tom Clancy) and the actual work was done by Du Brul. The second author's name is equally shrunk in both although actually seems more prominent in the US version, where it is in a different colour from Cussler and much more prominent than the 'with'. To my eyes, the title is more prominent in the UK version, where the white colour makes it stand out more than the yellow of the US, which feels very out of place to me. It's also interesting that the 'The' is separated from the title in the US but is presented as more a part of the title in the UK version. I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from this though. "A N/novel of/from the Oregon Files" - the final line of the text contains some interesting differences. I'm intrigued as to why Novel needs a capital in the US version - although I have noticed in some brief research into the differences between covers that US versions tend to go out of their way to tell you they are 'A Novel' on the cover in a way that UK editions do not feel the need to. I don't know why - is there some confusion in US bookshops or among readers that can't tell the difference between fiction and reality? And the of/from change really baffles me - from seems to make far more sense... it's not a novel of the files. Finally the US version feels the need to highlight the previous success of it's author - the cynic in me says this is because US readers won't read something unless they are sold it as being really good, and this is the US way of judging a book. Actually, I'm fairly surprised that the UK edition doesn't carry a similar line - they used to say something like "This is the guy I read ~ Tom Clancy". I hate when they use the same quote over and over again though - it makes it sound like no one else has ever said anything good about it. Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series is another victim of this, where every novel's cover compares the series to Lord of the Rings (stupid, as I didn't like LOTR). Overall, to my UK eyes, the US version looks like a novel from the 60s or 70s, of the type that you find in libraries wrapped in plastic covers and last taken out in 1998. The font is incredibly dated - the UK version realised it's font was dated and changed it to the very modern look seen above. I think the UK version looks much nicer and am really glad that it is the edition that will grace my bookshelves in a couple of weeks - modern and exciting. |
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| The Silly Price of Orange Juice | 2nd December 2009, 18:47 | |
 Now, I'm not a mathematician, but... |
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| Scientist sacked for doing science | 31st October 2009, 12:13 | |
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It's been all over the news for the past few days: Prof David Nutt - the head of the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs - told the government some science that it didn't like. It didn't like it from a moral point of view. No, he didn't tell them that creationism was rubbish (although I'm sure some MPs would have wanted him to go if he had), he merely commented on the relative dangers of several drugs. In a nutshell (see what I did there?) he said that cannabis isn't as bad as the government wants us to think. In fact, not as bad as other drugs that the government are happy for us to have (and pay them tax on when we purchase)... tobacco and alcohol. (Note that I use 'we' to be inclusive, not because I personally buy either of those substances). So, he's been sacked, because Alan Johnson (who I quite liked before) "cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy and [has] therefore lost confidence in [Nutt's] ability." But I digress in my giving some background - for what I actually want to talk about is Twitter. In particular the effect it has on politics. It's great. It means that the three major political parties in this country can send me little 140 character messages whenever they like. The Conservatives seem to be using it to send me a blow-by-blow account of PMQs every week. The Liberal Democrats use it to send me instructions on how to lobby my MP about climate change. And Labour... well, I've not really noticed any themes there. In particular I want to tie both topics above together by commenting on the following tweet from the Conservatives. Or as we now have to say, from @Conservatives. "Chris Grayling has said the sacking of the Government's chief drug advisor was 'inevitable' following his latest ill-judged comments." "Inevitable" is such a lovely word, but what I particularly like about this tweet is that it is a typical politician's tweet. You can take it either way: a) Chris Grayling believes that scientific advisors shouldn't tell anyone science, and so it was correct (and inevitable) that Prof Nutt should be sacked. b) Chris Grayling believes that once an advisor speaks out against the Labour government, it is inevitable that they will be sacked. Because the government are stupid spinmeisters. So what does Chris Grayling (shadow home secretary) actually think? From Twitter alone, we'll never know. Twitter: politics as it's always been. |
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| Fresh from the canteen | 27th March 2009, 10:01 | |
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| Attempt Two | 8th February 2009, 19:20 | |
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I've just written this blog entry once, but an accident led to me closing Firefox instead of Dreamweaver and losing everything I had written. So here goes again. Apologies if it is not as eloquent as the first version, but the beauty is that no-one will ever know. Firstly, I must confess to having lost interest in the Cola Watch. I am sure I wasn't the first. The dramatic fluctuations in the prices of Colas that had piqued my interest before Christmas seem to be no more, and the base prices of both brands have remained stable for weeks, so I gave up. Incidentally, Pepsi has been on BOGOF for the past week. That would be convenient if I had a convenient fridge to secure the second bottle in for the next day. Secondly, I wanted to mention the new button that our most eagle-eyed visitors will have spotted having appeared on the front page of Shastrix. (In my head I still call it shastrix.com, because without that it's more the word rather than the website). This button is simply marked 'books', and it has a long and checkered history... well, maybe slightly. In the olden days, I had an application on my Facebook profile called 'Visual Bookshelf'... or it might have been 'Virtual'... which enabled you to list the books you had read, were reading, and wanted to read. It wasn't perfect - for example I reinterpreted the 'want to read' as 'have on the shelf waiting to be read' - but I was able to put up with it, and its increasing commercialism (comments, sharing, competitiveness, adverts, visual restaurateur', etc.). Until, that is, the great Facebook face-lift of 2008, when the interface became unusable - or at least unsuitable for how I wanted to use it. So, I decided that I would write my own bookshelf site, and add in some reviews of my own - that way, I could continue to keep a database of my books, and could have it exactly how I liked. I wrote a quick mock up version of how it would look, built the database and populated it with a few entries as tests... and then forgot all about it. About six months later Ashley suggested that I should use my blogs to write reviews of the books that I was ploughing through. Aha! I thought. 'Ta-da!' I said, and revealed the pre-built website just for that purpose. Memory having been restored, I quickly finished off the workings of the site and set about reviewing the books I was reading. And finally, today, I have added the comments feature, so that users can leave behind their own thoughts about the books that I have read, or ask further questions. There is also a suggestions page, which you have to look quite hard to find, and I'm looking forward to receiving some good ideas. |
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| Cola Watch Day 8 | 26th January 2009, 13:18 | |
I've decided to count the weekends, even though I have no data for them. The only change today is that Fanta has been added to the two for £1.50 offer. |
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| Cola Watch Day 5 | 23rd January 2009, 18:34 | |
No change today. Sorry the photo is a little rushed.  Giving this a rest for the weekend, as I'm not going to be going to work. Hopefully next week will bring some more exciting developments! There are some updated on the Tesco website however - a price comparison with Asda for 9th Jan. Only two week old data! At that point, both Tesco and Asda were selling Coca-Cola for 87p, and no prices were quoted for Pepsi. One day, maybe I will take a trip to Asda to investigate whether or not they sell 500 ml bottles of Pepsi, as Tesco seem to claim. Website prices are unchanged, however I do notice that Tesco.com have included Pepsi 500 ml in my 'favourites' based on things I buy on my clubcard. How exciting. |
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