Up Next: Death on the Nile
Reading schedules, a journey through book cover, and more
I read recently that Death on the Nile was originally published in eight serialized installments in the Saturday Evening Post from May to July of 1937. I wish fiction was still published that way—one section at a time, in a magazine that pretty much everyone reads—but I suppose serialized television has replaced it. Instead of reading a new section of an Agatha Christie novel we all check out the new installment of whatever shows we’re watching on Netflix or Disney+ or Prime Video. I guess we are kind of trying to recreate that approach here on Close Reads, a few chapters at a time. The question is whether you will be able to hold off on finishing the book in one week or whether you will read at the same pace as the show. To each their own. Either way, happy reading!
Still need to snag a copy of this book? We always recommend you buy from your local bookstore if you can, but if you want to buy it through Goldberry you can do that here.
Reading Schedule
Death on the Nile has a slightly unusual structure. It’s open with a brief “part one” in which the characters are introduced “in order of appearance” followed by a longer “part two", which makes up 95% of the book. With that in mind, here’s the schedule:
Episode 1 ( January 7): Part 1 (Characters in Order of Appearance) + Part 2: Chapters 1-9
Episode 2 (January 14): Part 2: Chapters 10-20
Episode 3 (January 21): Part 2: 21-End (Jan 21)
Episode 4 (January 28): Q&A Episode
Death on the Nile Covers Over the Years
Like many of you, I am a book cover enthusiast and am especially partial to the design of books in the 40s, 50’s, and 60s. That said, I’m not so sure about these Death on the Nile covers. What do you think?
The 1930’s produced a lost of wonderful covers, but these two—both the US and UK covers—are pretty rough. I appreciate the emphasis on the water-based journey of the story and on Egyptian landmarks, but both lack the tonal consistency that the best book covers manage to capture. These are just bland.
Avon produced several covers of Death on the Nile through the middle decades of the last century and pretty much all of them are weird. They all emphasize the noir elements of the story, and this 1944 edition is probably the most weird, but also the least interested in Linette as sexual being.
Like Avon, Pan, a publisher that specializes in mass produced paperbacks, released several edition of this book, and this is my favorite. Honestly, this might be my favorite cover every made for this book.
Mid-century, Penguin published a bunch of novels with these two-tone covers. They’re simultaneously pretty boring and pretty classy so I had to include this one.
Nope. Not for me. Could be for you. I appreciate that they shot their shot with this one, though.
You probably recognize this series, which was released by William Morrow in 2011. They’re fine. I appreciate how clean they are. They generally focus on a single element with fairly simple typography. After all, the real emphasis here is the author’s name in the recognizable script.
This new edition, also from William Morrow, is weirdly irritating to me. The series is simple to a fault, but the real problem is this cover could just as easily belong to, say, a Mark Twain book. What about this says “Agatha Christie’s international crime thriller”? I actually much prefer the movie tie-in version at the top of this email.
In Case You Missed It
Last week we chatted about our favorite reads of 2021. Each of us brought our own approach to our lists and I think we ended up with a pretty interesting list.
I also chatted with singer-songwriter-novelist, Josh Ritter, for Bibliography.
Over on “The Play’s the Thing”, Tim, Heidi, and co. began discussing Henry IV, Part I.
And, finally, over on Patreon, we’re discussing Anna Karenina. Hope you’ll join us!
Coming up Next on Close Reads
As I Lay Dying: February 4-March 4
1984: March 11-April 8
A Raisin in the Sun: April 15
Tess of the D'urbervilles (featuring Karen Swallow Prior!): April 22 - June 24
A Month in the Country: July 1-15
Week off / No show: July 22
Laurus: July 29 - September 9
A Gentleman in Moscow (featuring Ian Andrews!): September 16 - November 4
My Name is Asher Lev: November 11 - December 23
End of the Year (2022) Pods: December 30
Until next time, happy reading!
-D
They're brilliant. Especially the one with the skeleton - what the hell were they thinking?
I actually like the 2011 William Morrow cover, but Kindle being what it is, the cover on my ebook changed to the movie tie-in with the actor, rather than the boat at the top of the newsletter. I find the art of bookcovers fascinating!