Oh Here's A Reading Response

What’s the Real Endangered Species?

The extinction of the book cover promises great loss, the kind that effects people as a culture and diminishes our values. This loss perpetuates our incessant need for instant gratification of knowledge and our overall cultural ignorance to the intimate experience that could be had between the reader and the book. In doing any activity it will be more enjoyable the more engaged you are, the more you will take away and the more you will have to give of yourself afterwards. The book cover is a beautiful microcosm of this understanding.

When reading Craig Mod’s Hack the Cover I tried to think about all of the books that I had read and surprisingly to me the ones that I remember most have had distinctive and memorable covers, whether minimalist or intricate from the interior out. Looking back on those books I feel as though I missed a chapter because, at the time, I had no idea how significant the covers themselves are. Book covers, when constructed with intentionality and care are like an all access backstage pass, a behind the scenes tour.

In the beginning of Mod’s article he references a quote by “Paula Fox [from] her memoir, The Coldest Winter: “I touched his signature as though it had been his face.’”

This was my favorite part of both articles because it emphasizes, what I find to be, the most important part of a cover, intimacy. Touching someone else’s face after a long conversation is a rare and beautiful experience that can be had through the cover of a book, a connection between multiple visual fields. Mod’s discuss how publishers are trying to adapt cover art to appeal digitally and vice versus, so they are interchangeable. I think it is crucial to continue these endeavors however, I fear that once the physicality of the book is lost so I opportunity for that personal relationship; I find it comparable to having a burned copy of a CD of one of your absolute favorite bands.

For many consumers the cover may have lost it’s importance and it’s relevance may be hidden but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a thriving topic of underground artists and book enthusiasts. In The Revolution of the Photo Book Alan Rapp writes to this declaration.

I suggest that just because our focuses have become digital we have easily allowed ourselves to forget the real world, the physical world (the libraries and bookstores, small cafes and grandiose warehouses), just as we do when searching for a book (and instead of making our way into the real world we search on Amazon). When we constantly limit our interactions with digital means we are limiting our understanding and awareness with the creative processes. At the end of the article Rapp states that the ‘death of the book’ is only applicable to some, some being those who do not venerate it’s worth.