Imaginary Book Recs Cover Thoughts: Round One

Two Passengers on the Last Train by A.G. Benedict: Obscure English literary fiction from the 1920s. I read it as a Gutenberg ebook, but the original cover was one of those clothbound classics with silhouette images. Any modern-day reprints are by very small publishing houses that provide minimal, low-budget covers using old illustrations (something like this version of Manalive.)

Song of the Seafolk by Marjorie A. Penrose: American children's fantasy from 1954, with illustrated cover typical of the era. Has had rerelease covers in subsequent decades (including one very nice painted cover from the '90s).

Bright Folly by Glorya M. Hayers: 1930s comedy mystery. Most representative cover is the mass-market paperback that looks like the more cartoony covers of Wimsey novels (like the editions that contain this version of Gaudy Night), though with a bit more of a sunny Wodehouse twist.

On Eternity's Doorstep by Willa Aldecott: Classic autobiographical novel about WWI nursing. Several rereleases over the years, all involving variations of historical photographs or historical-nursing-items on a colored background. (The Hiding Place keeps coming to mind as a cover comp, except with more sepia-toned photos and gentle browns and neutrals as background colors.)

The Queens of Wintermoon by Jessica Wagner: 1980s (or '90s, I can't remember) adult fantasy with an illustrated cover. A 2010s attempt to repackage it as a YA series split the book into four covers that each featured the heraldic symbol of the House of each of the four sisters (Raven, Eagle, Falcon, and Firebird) on a different jewel-toned background (probably blue, green, orange or red, and violet or black).

Caroline by Maria Layton: 1820s classic novel. Anything that's been done for an Austen book is applicable here.

The Lands of Dorothon series by Barbara Lamley: Off-brand versions of Narnia.

The Autumn Queen’s Promise by Rose Rennow: 1990s children's historical fantasy. Illustrated cover that combines the fantastical autumn colors of An Enchantment of Ravens with the more straightforward historical imagery of a book like The Sign of the Beaver or The Witch of Blackbird Pond.)

Island in the Stars by Carolyn Taylor Harris: 1970s children's science fantasy, with the period-accurate slightly wonky cartoony style.

The Camille series by Annette Nowell: Anne of Green Gables covers but with more exotic settings as the background. Both Camille in the Alps and Camille in the Andes involve her climbing mountains in intrepid Edwardian girl-reporter wear.

The Lakeshore Plan by Louise Zajac: Something between Swallows and Amazons and The Penderwicks. Could go full-on painted summer scenery, but simple drawings and/or silhouettes are also valid options.

Ever Miss Eliza by Charlotte Koning: 1940s slice-of-life light fiction. Honestly, I just picture the cover of D.E. Stevenson's Charlotte Fairlie, except the illustration is a woman in front of a rural schoolbuilding.

The Ocean’s Revenge by Edward G. Whitmore: 1940s pulp fiction in all its glory. Cover features a striking painting of a futuristic submarine in the grasp of a huge squid-creature.

The Book of All Days by Harriet Street: Painting of a little girl peering at an old-fashioned book.

The Guardian of the Nest by Aurelia T. Noah: 1960s children's fantasy. Probably a cloth-bound cover with the images (fairy tale carved right into the cover the way they are in some old books.

The Thief’s Debut by M.J. Ponders: Very recent indie-published fairy tale retelling that is unfortunately saddled with the genre-typical "girl in a sparkly prom dress" cover that probably involves her wearing a mask and standing in front of a vaguely Venetian-looking building. In a better world, it would get a digital-painted cover more along the lines of The Electrical Menagerie, (though the subject matter would be something between The Princess Bride and The Lies of Locke Lamora).

The Interdimensional Book Carrier by Martin Kaspar: Modern-day bestseller. Cover comps coming to mind are The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry and Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

watching movies is so much more fun once your ear is trained to recognize the Wilhelm scream and the Dies Irae

You both get it

If you would like to join the fun and train your ear (aka never be able to be normal during a movie again)

Wilhelm Scream compilation

Dies Irae compilation

Another important truth

i think as adults it's our responsibility to be nice to kids and treat them with the respect we wish we got at that age and im not kidding or exaggerating in the least

I dream of a Hallmark royal romance where the worldbuilding goes beyond "there's a tiny British-flavored Western European nation." Let's branch out. Let's go crazy. Let's put this monarchy in North America so we've got this entire alternate history of political and cultural differences that our spunky commoner has to navigate.

Our options include:

@thatscarletflycatcher Northwest Angle micronation! Perfect! A kingdom formed from a surveying error and disagreements over fishing rights! Spunky Commoner meets the prince while fishing, one or both of them fall out of the boat, and after the rescue she yells at him, until she's shocked by the reveal that he's a prince. It practically writes itself!

This also suggests kingdoms could exist on various islands within the Great Lakes. So many wonderful possibilities!

@afterlifeincorporated I love it! All these different kingdoms working together! Imagine the insanity of emperor elections!

well there WAS a “kingdom” on an island in the Great Lakes but that doesn’t mean we want a meet-cute about it😂😬

He looks so excited my God 🤣🤣

I know this is about ecological balance and population control but I can’t help but imagine those wolves are on a covert mission to assassinate moose extremists or some shit

He’s wagging his lil tail!!

Help a poor soul out and reblog this✌️

*this is not including the animated version

Stardust (2007) dir. Matthew Vaughn

Protect your mental health by taking mixed signals as a no.

Historic extent of American Bison herds.

The slaughter of the American Buffalo from 1720 through 1889. The 4-digit numbers are dates of local extinction. Bolded numbers do represent remaining buffalo in 1889.

Inshallah we shall paint the map brown again.

Bro in law, reading If You Give A Moose A Muffin for the first time: Ohhhh little man this moose is getting way off track!!!

Bro in law, closing the book: Little man this moose is NOT a role model

my friends it has just sunk in that after nearly four and a half years I AM going home. I can walk in my woods, swim in my lakes, see my hometown, hug all of my family, step foot in my parents’ house, cook food with my mother in her kitchen, play with my two and a half year old nephew who’s never met me, sit around summer campfires, be in the same time zone the same season the same second on the clock as my home.

and it’s so emotionally massive I refuse to think about it.

and I’ve realized something. My life is split into pre-trauma and post-trauma not just by how my life has been forever altered, by also by how I engage with media on both sides of that divide. I easily invested in media pre-trauma, I was often hit in the feels by many songs or movies or stories, but now - it’s not that I won’t, it’s that I can’t.

I cannot feel “that delicious angst” (which was never delicious to me since I felt in terms of What If It Was Real People Experiencing That), in fact I often feel a tenth of my old emotions or nothing at all towards new media. But pre-trauma media has already been processed and established, so I have full-faceted and complex emotions I can tap into.

But not for anything new.

I hold my emotions in reserve for real life, not fiction, and my life had much grief so I am more prepared for sorrow than joy.

I left my home because I wasn’t healing there, I came to the other side of the world and had a wedding without my family because we were going to return to them later, but later is three and a half years and a baby later, meanwhile a friend was killed in a car accident here my uncle has died young from cancer over there and I never said proper goodbyes to them or to anyone else back home.

and this isn’t “poor me” because God and I have walked this road together every step of the way and it is what it is - but I hadn’t realized how much I’d been affected by the road until I started cleaning off the dust y’know?

and how does one return from going into the west to say “well I’m back”?

that’s rhetorical because I already know - I do it the same way I left for the west.

for so long I’ve carried the weight of being well-and-truly stuck in another country, no light at the end of the tunnel, and now the Lord has brought me into a wide place under the open sun and emotionally I am hesitant to believe it. (But I have believed before! And I have healed because of it. I can heal again)

I am living the soft and gentle “oh!” in writing. I want to go home. I AM going home. “Oh.”