Cover Contemplation

Bullet by Laurell K. Hamilton


Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series covers have gone through many changes since the first book’s 1993 release and occasionally all of the books will be released with covers in the same vein. The latest overhaul of the look of the series happened in 2008 with Blood Noir but the Berkley Publishing company has gone back and released covers that compliment the new ones.

Personally, I find the new US covers ugly and they were a major reason I didn’t want to buy them when they first started coming out. I owned all but four books in the series at that point and for the most part they all looked similar with the different women on the covers in different poses (there were one or two that were older and different but not too different). While I’ll be the first to admit that the new covers for the Anita books stand out, in my opinion they don’t match the content of the books really well. They look like something you would find for the cover of a Stephen King novel or something and while Anita does have the highest kill count outside of a war novel, the books are more urban fantasy romance (sometimes bordering on erotica) than horror these days.

One more complaint is the title. Laurell K. Hamilton was consistent throughout the series of naming her books after buildings (mostly clubs) and in one occasion a person in the series and now she’s gone a completely different direction with the names. I’m not even sure where the name Bullet is supposed to come from this time! Anita usually kills with a gun anyway. Maybe the author just got tired of making up new names for buildings?

Now the UK covers for Bullet aren’t too bad though they remind me of a tattoo or stained glass. I wouldn’t say that they’re my favorite either but they are more interesting since there is more to look at. The simplicity of the US cover does make it eye-catching as well but something about the UK cover appeals to me slightly more.

Under the Covers:


*If you know of any covers from other countries, etc. Please send me links!

Anita Blake Series
1. Guilty Pleasures (1993)
2. The Laughing Corpse (1994)
3. Circus of the Damned (1995)
4. The Lunatic Café (1996)
5. Bloody Bones (1996)
6. The Killing Dance (1997)
7. Burnt Offerings (1998)
8. Blue Moon (1998)
9. Obsidian Butterfly (2000)
10. Narcissus in Chains (2001)
11. Cerulean Sins (2003)
12. Incubus Dreams (2004)
13. Micah (2006)
14. Danse Macabre (2006)
15. The Harlequin (2007)
16. Blood Noir (2008)
17. Skin Trade (2009)
18. Flirt (2010)
19. Bullet (2010)

BTT- Changing Reading Tastes

Have your reading choices changed over the years? Or pretty much stayed the same? (And yes, from childhood to adulthood we usually read different things, but some people stick to basically the same kind of book their entire lives, so…)

Yes and no. I've always adored fantasy and fairy tales and that's still true but the older I've gotten the more varied my tastes have gotten. I was in my late teens before I voluntarily picked up a nonfiction book for example and while they aren't my absolute favorite, I do like to read them occasionally. However, I still prefer fantasy of almost any kind to anything else.

BTT- First Book

What is the first book you remember reading? What about the first that made you really love reading?

Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!

I'm honestly not sure what the first book I ever read was. I've been reading since I was 3 years old and I don't remember much before I was four or five. I didn't grow up with many current books, mostly collections of stories that my grandma had picked up here and there so it was probably one of those. I do remember really loving to read and be read to out of a book that had Disney stories in it from Bambi, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan though.

Teaser Tuesday- Triple Cross

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us at least two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page
• You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

TRIPLE CROSS BY MARK T. SULLIVAN
Grant nodded. “Jack and I believe the world is on the verge of the greatest creative period in the history of man. Politics can’t get in the way.”

Skipping Musing Monday

I'm skipping the Musing Monday this week. Not because I don't like the question but because I'm feeling a little lazy and Baloo-ish after working on that Jungle Book review over on my other blog. So here's some songs that Disney made to kind of spoof The Jungle Book or just to remix it. Enjoy!



This was on the House of Mouse but I could only find the song not the actual video :(


Oh, and Louis Armstrong did a cover of The Bare Necessities too