In spite of my otherwise surprisingly-consistent progress with this challenge lately, I considered taking this weekend off from posting, as I have done a few times since I started. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), quarantine has left me with even more time on my hands than usual, as well as a strange desire to see this challenge through to the end. So, we will be having a post today after all.
Today's prompt is set apart from previous variations by the fact that it doesn't require (and in fact explicitly forbids) having read the book you choose. Like many people who claim to love books but in fact spend more time browsing and buying than we do actually reading them, my list of books that 'I've been meaning to read' is incredibly long. Luckily for me, it's also an actual list, recorded on the website of an international, demon-owned evil corporation which I won't name here. In order to select the most fitting book for this prompt, all I had to do was scroll to the very start of this list and then look for a book which I am still interested in reading now. My chosen book ended up being the 1932 comic novel Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons.
Not courtesy of Goodreads this time but from Penguin Books instead, here is the book's blurb:
When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly-named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders: cousin Judith, heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness; Amos, preaching fire and damnation; their sons, lustful Seth and despairing Reuben; child of nature Elfine; and crazed old Aunt Ada Doom, who has kept to her bedroom for the last twenty years. But Flora loves nothing better than to organise other people. Armed with common sense and a strong will, she resolves to take each of the family in hand. A hilarious and ruthless parody of rural melodramas and purple prose, Cold Comfort Farm is one of the best-loved comic novels of all time.I think I initially heard about Cold Comfort Farm back in the days of my first blog, which would now be almost ten(!) years ago. It was beloved by several other bloggers whose tastes I mostly shared, and their high praise of it combined with what sounded like a charming plot was enough to make me want to read it. I added the book to my wishlist and proceeded to um and ah over buying it for the next almost-decade. To this day, I still have neither read nor even purchased a copy of this book.
Since I can't say much else about the plot or merits of Cold Comfort Farm (since, you know, I haven't read it), I suppose the only thing I can discuss is why exactly I haven't read it yet despite wanting to for such a long time. Unlike a lot of books on my extensive to-read list, I can't argue that I've put off reading it because it's too long (it's less than 300 pages), it's too heavy a topic (literally a comedy), or even that it's hard to find a copy (I've seen it in dozens of bookshops over the years).
In the time between finding out about this book and now, I've even purchased and read another book by the same author, Here Be Dragons. I loved that book and if anything it should have made me more likely to read Cold Comfort Farm, and yet I still haven't done so. So what's the problem?
I'm a little ashamed to admit that probably the most likely reason I haven't read Cold Comfort Farm so far - besides the usual delay that happens with reading any book on a to-read list - is that I haven't liked any of the covers. It's shallow and I'm a bit embarrassed to say it, but it's true. One advantage that Here Be Dragons had over its literary sibling was its beautifully-designed cover art. In contrast, all the editions of Cold Comfort Farm which I had encountered featured either an art style that didn't appeal to me or just a plain close-up photo of a cow's face on the cover. Neither of these made me particularly inclined to have a copy of the book in my possession.
To illustrate my point, here are some photos of the covers of Stella Gibbons' books which I have so far found available to purchase or borrow. From left to right, we have: the 2011 Vintage Classics edition of Here Be Dragons; the 2006 Penguin Classics edition of Cold Comfort Farm; the Penguin Essentials reprint of CCF; and finally the CCF Penguin Classics Deluxe edition.
Taste in art (including book design) is highly subjective, so I'm not going to say that these designs for Cold Comfort Farm are bad. Perhaps the warm colours and satirical look of them go very well with the tone of the book; I wouldn't know. Either way, I'm afraid to say that I do not find any of them aesthetically pleasing enough to want to borrow them, let alone buy a copy.
If you saw the first cover design for Cold Comfort Farm near the start of this post, you might be wondering, 'What about that cover? Isn't that better than the others?' Well reader, I would agree it's much nicer than any of the others. So why haven't I got a copy with that cover design? As it happens, it was only when
I'm sure that some of you reading think I'm rather shallow, or at least have my priorities wrong, for letting something as insignificant as a book cover prevent me from reading a story that appeals to me. If so, I'd like to know, are book covers of absolutely no importance to you? Are they not something you even notice, or are they just not enough of a factor to prevent you from getting a book entirely? Also, what books are there (if any) that you have always wanted to read but somehow never got around to reading? I'd be curious to know what unread books you are haunted by, and especially what it is that has stopped you from reading them so far.
Book covers are bound (no pun intended) to affect any ones decision on buyiny a book. It's probably the key thing to draw browser's to a particular book, apart from recommendations and favourite authors. Nice post and keep at it as you have the time.
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