Friday Face-Off: Cars
Welcome to The Friday Face-Off, a weekly meme created by Books by Proxy! Each Friday, we will pit cover against cover while also taking the opportunity to showcase gorgeous artwork and feature some of our favorite book covers. If you want to join the fun, simply choose a book each Friday that fits that week’s predetermined theme, post and compare two or more different covers available for that book, then name your favorite. A list of future weeks’ themes are available at Lynn’s Book Blog.
This week’s theme is:
“Ridin’ along in my automobile”
~ a cover featuring CARS
Mogsy’s Pick:
NOS4R2 by Joe Hill
The villain of NOS4R2 is Charles Talent Manx, a predator who likes to prey on children by offering them rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith before spiriting them away forever into the otherworldly realm called “Christmasland”. Not surprisingly, many of the books’ covers either portray the aforementioned automobile with the eponymous license plate, and a few feature wintery or Christmas-y themes.
From left to right, top to bottom: Gollancz (2013) – Gollancz (2014) – Orion (2013) – William Morrow (2013)
Dutch (2013) – German (2013) – Portugese (2014) – Czech (2013) – German (2014) – Russian (2014) – French (2015) – Hungarian (2014) – Japanese (2014) – Chinese (2015)
Winner:
Choosing a winner this week was another toughie. I debated back and forth, waffling between several strong contenders including the “Most Familiar” (William Morrow), “Most Artistic” (Subterranean Press, always with their amazingly illustrated covers), “Most Frightening” (German edition, 2014), and “Most Badass” (Hungarian, 2014). In the end though, I had to hand it to the cover I felt fit the tone of the story best. The Portuguese cover with its creepy, washed-out-photograph effect wins here, featuring the Wraith creeping up on you as its owner hunts for his next victim, as he has done for decades. Anything can happen on the lonely road between this realm and the one beyond the veil, and you never know when Charles Manx will come calling.
What do you think? Which one is your favorite?
The BiblioSanctum 
Hmm dunno which is my fav, I like the garland
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Go Christmas or go home, right? 🙂
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difficult to choose one between all these
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When there are so many covers, it does make the choice that much harder 🙂
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I like the very first one. It shows the car, but is still very dark and almost makes the car look like a monster…
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You’re right, I didn’t think about that!
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I love looking at all of these covers…so interesting. I think my fave remains the 2013 Golllancz but I also like the Czech 2013 as well. I have owned this since it was first released and STILL haven’t read it. It’s extremely sad I know. Great cover face-off!
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Haha, well, I hope you’ll get a chance to read it soon 😉
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Good choice! Since the car features prominently in the economy of the story, it HAS TO be the center piece of the cover. I like the Gollancz cover as well, the coloring is weirdly scary… 🙂
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Interestingly, it’s also one of the few that don’t use the black and red color scheme…for some reason that is very popular across the board.
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This was the first book that came to mind this week but I’ve not read it yet! Great choice! I like your pick too – it seems menacing somehow!
My other choice this week was Christine by Stephen King but I settled on Chamber! I seem to have done something odd with my post this week – serves me right for messing around on the blog using my phone! I think I’ve deleted last weeks post and merged the two! Double doh.
Lynn 😀
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Yeah, something weird must have happened there! I did not see your new post pop up in my reader, so I headed on over to your blog manually. I commented and noticed that it was the same comment section from your post last week! Well, I’m glad you confirmed that something was wonky, I thought I was going nuts 🙂
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I’ve only done a couple of the Friday Face Offs, but I recognized these covers from when I used NOS4A2 for the “Blood on the Cover” theme (http://www.tenaciousreader.com/2016/08/19/friday-face-off-the-blood-is-life-and-it-shall-be-mine-a-cover-which-features-blood/). I’m kinda partial to the holiday ones, but I really like the one you selected as well
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Yep, I remember that one! Figured I would feature it this time since I missed that week’s theme, and it’s just too perfect for the cars topic 🙂
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Tough one. I like the first one with the blue tone and what looks like tall grass, and also the one with the wreath. Are those skulls in the wreath? lol!!!
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Haha, they are! Wow, good eye, I didn’t notice before 🙂
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Damn, that’s a lot of covers!😀
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I had no idea it had been translated into so many languages.
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