Today I got an email. Well actually I probably got well over 100, between work and home. But one stuck out. It was from Abebooks who are marketing 30 Novels Worth Buying For the Cover Alone. It’s an interesting way to sell – and buy – books, and certainly makes for a striking advert. Does it work? Well I guess it must, or at least it stands a good chance, otherwise Abebooks wouldn’t have perpetrated it. Punters? Well, given that he probably can’t read, isn’t this how Joe Average buys books anyway? Of course people like us wouldn’t. Would we?

Oh and just so you know the 30 novels are:

• Skim, Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
• A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
• Vacation, Deb Olin Unferth
• South of the Border, West of the Sun, Haruki Murakami
• Sharp Teeth, Toby Barlow
• The Noodle Maker, Ma Jian
• Everyone’s Pretty, Lydia Millet
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
• Fruit, Brian Francis
• The Separation, Christopher Priest
• The Chess Machine, Robert Lohr
• The Last Jew, Yoram Kaniuk
• The Monsters of Templeton, Lauren Groff
• Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, Vol. 1, Elji Otsuka and Housui Yamazaki
• The River Wife, Jonis Agee
• My Mistress’ Sparrow is Dead, Jeffrey Eugenides
• Beowulf, Seamus Heaney
• Strawberry Fields, Marina Lewycka
• The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
• Memorial, Bruce Wagner
• The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
• The Archivist, Martha Cooley
• Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson
• Arkansas, John Brandon
• The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon
• Parasites Like Us, Adam Johnson
• Hypohypothesis, Heather Folsom
• Rant, Chuck Palahniuk
• The Boys in the Trees, Mary Swan

Of which I have heard of just FOUR and read the grand total of … ONE!