Before I even moved to New York ... when I was, like, eleven or twelve years old, there were certain book titles that were ... evocative. For me, of a mood. A maybe ineffable mood, but still, enough of a mood that later, when the book got assigned in class, it was like... Like when the taste of the soup doesn't match the smell from the stove? That kind of disappointment. I mean, Tender is the Night? Such a better book before I read it.

And then there are the covers. At least with paperback classics all the covers are the same. Like, period paintings of women strolling through a field of wheat after an attack of despond, or whatever. I can ignore those covers. But with new books, I am so susceptible. It's like, I see the cover, and I think: Too creepy; too snarky; too sappy.

So I decide I want something melancholy ... yet frolicsome, and so I find a book whose design and title seem melancholy yet frolicsome. But am I willing to risk the full cover price? Which is exorbitant? For this book that I have just totally judged by its cover? So what I always do, which is embarrassing but true ... I flip to the author photo.