Teen Fiction Is the Stock Art of Literature, Except When It's the Stock Art of Stock Art

I came across two books today. The first when I was asked if it was available in paperback. A little girl handed it too me. The second book came just three minutes later, off a cart of brand new books that had yet to see a shelf.

The first: "You Have Seven Messages" by Stewart Lewis. Here's the GoodReads page.

The second: "These Girls" by Sarah Pekkanen. (Its GoodReads page.)

One by a man with two first names, the other by a woman with a surname that makes one wonder why she didn't just pick up a nom de plume. And in her defense, "These Girls" is listed as adult fiction, but I would surmise in the same way that Baz Luhrmann's 1996 Leo DiCaprio vehicle Romeo + Juliet was an adult movie made for adults and not for teenagers but for really adult adults.

But maybe I could be forgiven for thinking they are the same book.



No, these aren't the same book at all.

Not in the slightest. Nope. Uh-uh.


However, yeah, the back covers both credit GettyImages after cover designers and photographer.

Apparently, in book publishing, this is nothing new.

Oddly, it's the teen fiction on the left that I feel has the better design, with sharper focus and more saturated color.

Plus, with the higher contrast, the girl doesn't look like she has a big square crease in her ass. No teenage girl wants to empathize with a flat-butted protagonist. Although it shows the woman's foot, and we all know that pretty women hate their feet.

On Fields of Interest

I find it annoying that my ability to speed read is entirely dependent on how interesting I find the subject matter.

Not just because I can't speed read the boring stuff I'd want to get out of the way faster, but because I actually slow-read the worst stuff.

Crappy Star Wars novel with barely passable writing? 48 hours. 72 if I have a busy weekend.

James Joyce?

Maaaaaaan … I've been on the fifth short in "Dubliners" for like a year now. I've read other books. Entire other books. Plus the whole internet. Even the weird Japanese stuff.

I did at least to Star Wars novels, the new Hitchhiker's Guide book by Eoin Colfer, Chuck Klosterman's new book of essays Eating the Dinosaur, probably a half-dozen manga and Bob knows how many monthly comics I've torn through because it's just so easy to download them and read while more flow in.

I'm trudging through Freakanomics and a mindfuck thought experiment by the creator of "Dilbert" on my phone just to avoid a drunk Irishman who's been dead seventy years.

Though in my defense, simply being dead isn't reason enough to ever turn your back on a drunk Irishman.

They are crafty.