Salty Ink’s 2010 Judge-a-Book-by-Its-Cover Competition

Each year, as a fun, interactive way to get people talking about books, and to praise good book design, Salty Ink hosts an interactive a Judge-a-book-by-its-cover competition for titles released that year. It’s a fun way to plug books and designers, and to get people talking about both. Salty Ink picks a dozen well-designed books, and the general public votes for a winner.   

HERE’S HOW IT WORKS:

- Do NOT vote for your favourite book or because you like that author.

- Pretend you’ve read none of these.

- Vote for the book whose design, paired with its backcover summary, would entice you the most to read the book.

Assume for this exercise you like poetry, short fiction and novels equally. As you should, of course.

Press releases and giveaways ensue.

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CLICK COVERS TO ENLARGE THEM.

Annabel, a novel by Kathleen Winter (Anansi, Design by Bill Douglas)

In 1968, into the beautiful, spare environment of Labrador, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor girl. Only three people are privy to the secret — the baby’s parents and a trusted neighbour. Together the adults make a difficult decision: to raise the child as a boy named Wayne. But as Wayne grows to adulthood within the hyper-masculine hunting culture of his father, his shadow-self — a girl he thinks of as Annabel — is never entirely extinguished, and indeed is secretly nurtured by the women in his life. Haunting, sweeping in scope, Annabel is a compelling debut novel about one person’s struggle to discover the truth in a culture that shuns contradiction.

“Read it because it’s a story told with a sensitivity to language that compels to the last page, and read it because it asks the most existential of questions … what are we?” – Globe and Mail

The Artificial Newfoundlander, a novel by Larry Mathews (Breakwater Books, Design by Rhonda Molloy)

The Artificial Newfoundlander is a witty, playful, tale of contemporary St. John’s. Hugh Norman, a middle-aged English prof researching an eccentric novelist priest, is faced with the unexpected arrivals of his mysteriously unhappy daughter, her clueless husband, and an old flame ready for rekindling. Relationships morph, lines are crossed, and Hugh confronts some unpalatable but laugh-inducing dilemmas.

“Larry Mathews is a searing and silver tongued wit. He writes with tuned precision and care, but he is offbeat and great fun to read.” – Mark Anthony Jarman

Crisp, Short Fiction by R.W. Gray (NeWest Press, Design by Natalie Olsen)

Crisp confronts the unspeakable parts of memory, meditating on characters caught in isolation and struggling to make sense of grief, disappointment, and the occasional dinner party gone wrong. The characters in Crisp’s stories don’t always make sound decisions: a grieving widow pursues a priest, an unhappy wife whittles her husband to bits, and a nostalgic man has a one-night stand with a whale trainer. Ranging from the mystical to the eccentric, Gray masterfully uncovers human reactions to loneliness and unrest through tales about relationships, secrets, and a longing to connect.

“Gray’s stories are pared to their teasing essence. [He] can loft his prose assuredly to the poetic.” —Jim Bartley The Globe And Mail

The Death of Donna Whalen, documentary fiction by Michael Winter (Hamish Hamilton, design by David Gee)

In her home in St. John’s, Newfoundland Donna Whalen was stabbed 31 times. Her friends, family, and neighbours believed it was her abusive boyfriend Sheldon Troke. But the evidence is all circumstantial, providing a daunting challenge for police and prosecutors — and the course of justice takes many unpredictable twists and turns before the truth is finally revealed. In this mesmerizing work of documentary fiction, based on the controversial real life case, which continues to stir passionate feelings, Michael Winter pieces together the transcripts and court testimonies of Sheldon’s trial. He preserves the nuanced voice of each witness and the result is a harsh account of the tragedy that befell Donna Whalen and the controversial aftermath that tore her town apart.

“It’s a bold approach from top to bottom. It shows amazing faith in the power of story itself, the sheer ability of raw human character to transfix us. In stepping back from centre stage and turning the spotlight entirely on this devastating array of intersecting lives and deaths, Winter has enacted some of the most powerful storytelling of his career.” – The Globe and Mail  

Drive-by Saviours, a novel by Chris Benjamin (Roseway Publishing. design by John Van Der Woude)

Demoralized by his job and dissatisfied with his life, Mark punches the clock with increasing indifference; After six years of bureaucracy and pushing paper Mark has lost hope. All that changes when he meets Bumi, an Indonesian restaurant worker. Moved from his small fishing village and sent to a residential school under the authoritarian Suharto regime, Bumi’s radical genius and obsessive-compulsive disorder raise suspicion among his paranoid neighbours. When several local children die mysteriously the neighbours fear reaches a fevered pitch and Bumi is forced to flee to Canada. Brought together by a chance encounter on the subway, Mark and Bumi develop a friendship that forces them to confront their pasts. Drive-by Saviours is the story of desire and connection among lonely people adrift in a crowded world.

“Chris Benjamin’s debut novel is part contemporary fiction, part social commentary and part kick-in-the-ass storytelling.” – Carla Gunn

For and Against, poetry by Sharon McCartney (Goose Lane, design by Julie Scriver) 

Sharon McCartney’s visceral exploration of relationships — how they begin and end, the tenuous threads that hold people together, and the events that can tear them apart is unstintingly, eyes-wide-open aware. Beginnings, endings, transitions — none elude the sometimes sardonic but always sensitive, sinuous, and frank language of McCartney’s finely wrought poems. Shedding wilful blindness in favour of life-affirming humour, McCartney pushes language from absolute rawness to moments of intimate retrospection, revealing a delicate tension between anger and calm, past and present, denial and acceptance.

“You don’t read these poems, you feel them: Hammer in the head, shod foot on the throat, stiletto in the heart.” George Elliot Clarke

Girl Crazy, a novel by Russell Smith (HarperCollins)

Tightly plotted and fast paced, Girl Crazy is a cinematic ride through one man’s obsession with a younger woman. Justin, a dissatisfied community college teacher, meets Jenna and is attracted at once to her mixture of toughness, vulnerability and ripe sexuality. Jenna is unlike anyone Justin has ever known – through her he discovers a world of drugs and sex, casual violence and intimidation that at first frightens and then thrills him. Justin falls deeper into Jenna’s thrall, particularly as her erratic behaviour keeps him guessing. When Jenna ends the relationship abruptly, Justin finds he isn’t willing to let go of this new life, or of Jenna, without a fight.

“Smith excels at presenting the sexual fixations of the male psyche, slicing them apart and exposing the emotional impotence beneath. A story of scathing insight.” – Quill & Quire

The Glass Harmonica, a novel by Russell Wangersky (Thomas Allen, design by Bill Douglas)

After Keith O’Reilly witnesses the murder of his neighbour by a pizza delivery man one night during a snowstorm, a unique series of stories begins to unfold. As the narrative seamlessly moves from neighbour to neighbour, house to house, the reader begins to understand, not only the circumstances that led to the murder, but the private secrets and personal struggles of many of the McKay Street residents. Travelling through the changing viewpoints of a more than a dozen of people in a small residential neighbourhood in St. John’s, Newfoundland, The Glass Harmonica, looks at the way common memories and shared experiences bend and warp as individuals recall the events of their lives, and how these distortions influence both the character’s and the reader’s understanding of the truth.

“Wangersky writes with rich poetic insight, genuine compassion, and journalistic subtlety.” – Linden MacIntyre

 The Good News about Armageddon, poetry by Steve McOrmond (Brick Books, design by Alan Siu)

Poems that occupy the difficult territory of contemporary crisis with great candour and trenchant wit. Steve McOrmond’s unflinching take on contemporary life, with its saturnine candour and ironic focus, may remind readers of the anti-poetry of Europeans like Zbigniew Herbert: intense, humanistic and deeply sceptical of inflationary gestures or stagy rhetoric. Shedding illusions, but equally refusing the consolations of despair, McOrmond’s well-tempered satire is carried home on its own crisp music. 

“Variation keeps the reader moving, along with McOrmond’s plain language, direct-hit imagery and potent metaphor.” Telegraph-Journal

 Strange Heaven, a re-release of Lynn Coady’s debut novel (Goose Lane, design by Julie Scriver)

She’s depressed, they say. Apathetic. Bridget Murphy, almost eighteen, has had it with her zany family. When she is transferred to the psych ward after giving birth and putting her baby up for adoption, it is a welcome relief – even with the manic ranting of a teen stripper and come-ons of another delusional inmate. But this oasis of relative calm is short-lived. Christmas is coming, and Uncle Albert arrives to whisk her back to the bedlam of home and the booze-soaked social life that got her into trouble in the first place. Her grandmother raves from her bed, banging the wall with a bedpan through a litany of profanities. Her father curses while her mother tries to keep the lid on developmentally delayed Uncle Rollie. The baby’s father wants to sue her, and her friends don’t get that she’s changed.

“Authentic and unforgettable.” – Globe and Mail

 

Under This Unbroken Sky (2010 softcover), a novel by Shandi Mitchell (Penguin, design by Mary Opper)

In the spring of 1938, Teodor Mykolayenko returns to his family after nearly two years in prison for the crime of trying to feed them. Given shelter by his sister Anna, his wife, Maria, and their five children barely survived on the harsh and brutal Canadian prairie landscape. Channelling a determination gained from escaping starvation and Stalin’s crimes in the Ukraine, Teodor is committed to making a home. With unbending resolve, he takes to the land and as the crops grow, his family heals and strengthens, but their comfort is soon challenged: Anna’s rogue husband returns with an unforgivable plan. Mesmerizing and passionate, Under This Unbroken Sky is an astonishing tale of family, love, betrayal, and the resiliency of the human spirit.

“Under This Unbroken Sky crushed and inspired me simultaneously, a novel I didn’t want to end.  Shandi Mitchell’s prose strikes like a prairie thunderstorm.” – Joseph Boyden

Where Old Ghosts Meet, a novel by Kate Evans (Breakwater Books, design by Rhonda Molloy)

Matthew Molloy, bright and educated, longs to leave behind his miserable existence on a small farm in Ireland. He yields to pressure and sets aside his dream until one day, he walks away, leaving his wife and small son to fend for themselves. In the summer of 1971, his granddaughter Nora finds herself in Shoal Cove, Newfoundland, where Peg Barry reveals the secrets of Matthew’s reclusive life. The story slips back and forth between Ireland in the early 1900s, a country struggling to rediscover its identity and restore its nationhood, and Newfoundland in the 1940s, a country about to relinquish its nationhood and join Canada.

“Romantic and dark, full of intricate secrets, betrayal, bitterness, and redemptive love. Kate Evans vividly unveils the mysteries of family. Here are passionate, complex characters, very much alive.” – Lisa Moore

 

POLL CLOSES FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10TH

Also: I can vouch for every one of these 12 books. Every single one of them is worth your time if you’re enticed.

You can Vote for up to THREE covers

• Drive-by Saviours (20%, 155 Votes)
• Crisp (18%, 140 Votes)
• Annabel (16%, 121 Votes)
• The Good News about Armageddon (15%, 118 Votes)
• For and Against (10%, 81 Votes)
• The Artificial Newfoundlander (10%, 80 Votes)
• Under This Unbroken Sky (10%, 80 Votes)
• The Glass Harmonica (10%, 76 Votes)
• The Death of Donna Whelan (10%, 74 Votes)
• Where Old Ghosts meet (9%, 73 Votes)
• Strange Heaven (8%, 65 Votes)
• Girl Crazy (7%, 57 Votes)

Total Voters: 776

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After 776 votes, Drive-by Saviours, designed by John Van Der Wourde, published by Roseway Publishing, and written by Coast-columnist and all-around good guy, Chris Benjamin, won the 2010 Judge-a-book-by-its-cover Competition.

This is Benjamin’s debut novel, and you might have noticed this novel was a top 40 finalist for Canada Reads 2011.

Demoralized by his job and dissatisfied with his life, Mark punches the clock with increasing indifference; After six years of bureaucracy and pushing paper Mark has lost hope. All that changes when he meets Bumi, an Indonesian restaurant worker. Moved from his small fishing village and sent to a residential school under the authoritarian Suharto regime, Bumi’s radical genius and obsessive-compulsive disorder raise suspicion among his paranoid neighbours. When several local children die mysteriously the neighbours fear reaches a fevered pitch and Bumi is forced to flee to Canada. Brought together by a chance encounter on the subway, Mark and Bumi develop a friendship that forces them to confront their pasts. Drive-by Saviours is the story of desire and connection among lonely people adrift in a crowded world.

“Chris Benjamin’s debut novel is part contemporary fiction, part social commentary and part kick-in-the-ass storytelling.” – Carla Gunn

“[A] giant storytelling talent … Benjamin does a superb job of weaving the two tales together.” – Atlantic Books Today

 

RUNNERS UP:

Crisp, Short Fiction by R.W. Gray (NeWest Press, Design by Natalie Olsen)

Annabel, a novel by Kathleen Winter (Anansi, Design by Bill Douglas)

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