About a Snob
I've really been on a Nick Hornby trip these past few weeks. So you can imagine my delight when, while stocking up on used books at Aardvark's this afternoon, I came across About A Boy for only $6.50. However, there was one glaring problem: The Cover.
Yes folks, that's right. It was a movie poster cover. And if there's one thing I hate (am embarrassed by, more precisely) it's a book with a movie poster cover.
It sounds contradictory and ridiculous, I know. I'm a self-proclaimed movie and book whore, so why be humiliated when the two great tastes get together? (Kinda like Reeses!) There's nothing different about the words in the two copies. The story's the same. I even liked the movie, really liked it, in fact (Toni Collette and all). So why even care? I should get cool points just for reading such a cool book!
But as I hesitantly plopped my money down on the counter (actually my credit card...seven books later!) and made my way over to Cafe Du Soleil for a goat cheese, pesto, and red pepper sandwich (yum), I found myself going out of my way to hide poor Hugh's sneering face from the rest of the world as if the funky-dressed clientele would mock me for reading it only after the fact.
I am truly truly truly pathetically neurotic, aren't I?
Yes folks, that's right. It was a movie poster cover. And if there's one thing I hate (am embarrassed by, more precisely) it's a book with a movie poster cover.
It sounds contradictory and ridiculous, I know. I'm a self-proclaimed movie and book whore, so why be humiliated when the two great tastes get together? (Kinda like Reeses!) There's nothing different about the words in the two copies. The story's the same. I even liked the movie, really liked it, in fact (Toni Collette and all). So why even care? I should get cool points just for reading such a cool book!But as I hesitantly plopped my money down on the counter (actually my credit card...seven books later!) and made my way over to Cafe Du Soleil for a goat cheese, pesto, and red pepper sandwich (yum), I found myself going out of my way to hide poor Hugh's sneering face from the rest of the world as if the funky-dressed clientele would mock me for reading it only after the fact.
I am truly truly truly pathetically neurotic, aren't I?
posted by TessaJ at 3:13 PM
7 Comments:
This is unbelievable. I hate books with movie poster covers, but never actually identified it. I went out of my way to find a non-movie cover of In Her Shoes, and I cherish my original copy of Memoirs of a Geisha. Can you imagine after the Da Vinci Code comes out, how many new versions of the book we'll see, with the cropped Mona Lisa or with Tom Hanks!
PS I love the movie too! Hugh Grant is great...they all are.
Except that I refuse to read the Da Vinci Code ;)
I do have a few movie-cover books. Sadly. But usually if I haven't read a book and a movie version is coming out, I race to buy the original cover.
It's an illness, I tell you, my relationship with books!
Oh, I can identify completely ! I will not buy a book with a movie poster cover, I just won't. Closest I've come to that was buying Sense & Sensibility back when the Ang Lee film came out and it said in smallish print on the cover "Now a major motion picture" and that was bad enough...
Glad to know that I'm not alone with this freaky habit!
I avoid movie cover books as well...Even if it's just a library copy, I try to find an older version!
It really IS a good book, isn't it? I loved the development of character far more than the movie (and I did like the movie, so that's saying a lot).
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