If you spend a lot of time in the fiction stacks, you may have noticed shoes and feet gracing the covers of many adult novels and teen novels. This certainly isn’t a new trend, but it does seem more prevalent in the last five years for all sorts of novels (not just chick lit, which, admit it, is exactly what you were thinking).
So, what gives? Foot fetish? Cheap stock photography? A lofty goal of trying to convey a character’s journey?
Nah, I’m pretty sure it isn’t any of those. In fact, I think that including feet and shoes on book covers is less about what the image might convey — and more about what it doesn’t promise. In other words, a photograph of disembodied feet says very little, thus the possibilities for what’s inside are wide open.
We recently created a display of “Fiction for your soles” on Level 3 at the Central Library. Here are just a few titles included in the display:
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender; Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender; The Truth About Celia by Kevin Brockmeier; You Remind Me of Me by Dan Chaon; Must Love Dogs by Claire Cooke; Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie; Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Silje Dai; Love Walked In by Melissa de los Santos; Belong to Me by Marissa de los Santos; The Monk Downstairs by Tim Farrington; Lizzie’s War by Tim Farringon; About a Boy by Nick Hornby; A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby; The Ha-Ha by Dave King; The Girls by Lori Lansens; The Wife’s Tale by Lori Lansens, and there are about 60 more in the display. (If you want the list, email shelftalk@spl.org and I’ll send you the list of titles as a Word document.) Have some titles to add? Let us know here! AND, if you’re walking around downtown Seattle, stop by Level 3 at the Central Library and take a peek at our feet display!
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