If you've ever glanced at the cover of a new book and felt a jolt of déjà vu, there's a reason: You probably really have seen that cover before, or at least its main image. Recycling images -- stock art, great art, whatever -- is fairly common in the book design biz.
There are websites aplenty devoted to showing this, and it's interesting to see these covers lined up, side by side (by side). Even when they start with the same basic image, designers can convey entirely different moods through lighting, color and typography.
On one site, you can find St. Paul author Marlon James' recent novel, "The Book of Night Women," next to five other books with the same image. Or scroll up a bit, and see the same model, wearing the same polka-dot dress, same hand clutching the same hair, on Kent Haruf's "Eventide" as on Minneapolis writer Lorna Landvik's "Oh My Stars." (For Haruf's book, she took off her scarf.)
Go to readingthepast.com/gallery/reusable-covers.htm. It's fun.
Also ...
•The Center for Irish Studies at the University of St. Thomas, along with the O'Shaughnessy-Frey Library Center, will host their annual St. Patrick's Day open house from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Wednesday. At 12:15 there will be a brief program, with a reading. St. Thomas' Celtic collection, which began in 1917, holds more than 9,000 volumes and is one of the largest in North America.
•"Naked in the Stream: Isle Royale Stories," by Vic Foerster, has been published by Arbutus Press of Traverse City, Mich. Foerster, who lives in Michigan, has been visiting Isle Royale for more than 30 years.
