Mind you, I've mispronounced her name myself from time to time

I was also saying "Hermione" wrong in my brain when I read the Harry Potter books, until I seen the first movie. . .

HANNA [sic] BLANK: What this particular genre tells us is that we haven't yet reached a point with feminist change, where women can set the terms by which they are defined. These characters are examining what they're taught to examine in order to be perfect by other people's standards.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Hanna Blank writes criticism, novels and lesbian erotica. She says the heroines of chick lit all find their way to fulfillment along the same narrow path: a well-paying job, a devoted boyfriend.

HANNA BLANK: And you're not shown women who are trying to rebel against what they're given in terms of what's supposed to make a good life for a woman or what's supposed to make a woman successful.

From the (let's charitably say rushed and uncorrected) transcript of A Book for Every Girl & Boy, from On the Media (and All Things Considered) a few weeks back. Later, one hears/reads, in reference to the covers:

CRAIG BURKE: I, I don't know if that's true, but we've certainly put a lot of legs on covers. This year, for some reason, there are a lot of disembodied feet on books...

Anyone care to engage in cruel, unscientific idle speculation about the appeal of disembodied feet to the chick-lit-reading demographic? They can't all be same-sex foot fetishists, after all.

Wait, can they all be same-sex foot fetishists?

In a similar but unmentioned in the On the Media piece vein, there was a vogue for painted covers not dissimilar to those of Synthia SAINT JAMES (that's how it's capitalized on her site, dog), from Terry McMillan's novels, a few years back. Was a bit weirded out to see one on a book by Bebe Moore Campbell, seeing as she was a real writer had more of a history than Ms. McMillan, but figured if it shifted copies at retail, eh.

This will also be my attitude towards copies of Anna Karenina with the Oprah's Book Club seal of approval, next time I'm in a bookstore. Which should be tomorrow evening, at Unabridged, seeing David Sedaris, but I digress.

(Synthia SAINT JAMES also did the art for the Kwanzaa stamp the USPS graced us with a while back. I did not know that. Because I don't pay enough attention to these things.)

Don't think I've ever picked up a book because of the cover illustration or trade dress. In fact, I think I actively avoided anything with the Saint James style covers, which in retrospect might have been foolish.

Or might not. Anyone read any of the things?