The Queue
The Guy and I came to a startling conclusion whilst strolling through a bookseller's on Monday: the old saw, "Never judge a book by its cover," is a load of dingo's kidneys. There is no way to adjudge properly the worth of a book until it has been read from cover to cover, but there are too many books in the world simply to read them all. Clearly, some manner of screening or sorting process is urgently needed, and judging a book by its cover is no worse a sorting system than any other. I'm not praising the practice of judging a book by its cover, it is a horrible, vapid way of choosing what books to read, but the sorry fact is that it is no worse than any other sorting method of which I am aware.

Consider the alternatives. I adore my friends and prize very highly their puzzling affection for me, but fondness has no inherent bearing on compatible tastes in books. Book reviews? A book critic's opinion has no more validity than a dear friend's, but even less value since you know nothing about the critic's preferences, petty jealousies, or other biases. Promotional cover blurbs? Promotional, enough said. (Which is not to say there's anything wrong with promotion, the aims of promotion are simply different from the aims of the book recommendation-seeker.) Selecting which books to read and which to consign to the oblivion of remaining on the shelf, then, is a chaotic flirtation on the edge of madness, most certainly not for the emotionally fragile. And in such a world, a world without order, as arbitrary a selection criteria as a book's cover is as good as any other.

Plus, from a marketing perspective, the entire point of the cover, incurring all the expense of an artist and art director, is to bait readers into judging the book by that cover. So, in the end, "never judge a book by its cover" has no more validity than "stick and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." We all learn, in time, that broken bones heal, but the words, the wrong words by the right person at the right moment, can mar a lifetime.

Recently
Agatha Christie, Cards on the Table
Henry Chang, Chinatown Beat (abandoned)
Francie Lin, The Foreigner

Currently
Agatha Christie, Cat Among the Pigeons

Presently
Agatha Christie, Murder at the Vicarage
Karen E. Olson, The Missing Ink
Agatha Christie, After the Funeral

I was going to savage The Foreigner, but I've been distracted persistently by online chatting. Francie Lin will suffer the wrath of my poison pen another time.

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Tally Hall, "Welcome to Tally Hall" from Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum (T.L.A.M.)