Judging a Book by its Cover

May 26, 2015

Been thinking a lot about book jackets lately, as we tried to decide what the cover for my new cookbook, My Kitchen Year; 136 Recipes That Saved My Life should look like. (The book will be out at the end of September.)

That sent me to my bookshelf, to the place where I store some of the foreign translations of previous books. I don't have them all; the books are now in twenty-something different languages, but here are some of the more interesting jackets for Tender at the Bone.

I especially like this Taiwanese version; that little girl holding the bowl of food is embossed. But what I like best is that they've used classic food-related paintings for each of the chapter openings. What makes this particularly funny is that so many of them are religious paintings, like Veronese's The Wedding at Cana.

This is the Complex Chinese edition….

This is a different Complex Chinese edition. I kind of love that inside, where they spell out my name in arabic letters, they misspell it, turning me into Ruth Reich.