To Be Frank...

Is it just me or was the advertising and promotion for the BBC’s Anne Frank very sudden and kind of came out of nowhere. I only say the adverts on Friday and it starts this evening! Have they given me time to dig out my copy, which like most classics I have been meaning to read for ages, no they haven’t. (And yes I am aware that the BBC doesn’t evolve round me, but what do we pay the TV License for?) I am hoping its good especially after the stunt they pulled with ‘The Thirty Nine Steps’ which wasn’t bad but wasn’t really to the book.

I actually spent ages routing around for my copy of Anne Frank and it has vanish, completely and utterly disappeared. So naturally I now want to read it (I know, I know what about Anna Karenina, she’s a read in progress) and can’t. That instantly frustrated me for as soon as I had realised I would have to get a new copy I knew it would be the TV version. We all know how I feel about those? Oh, do you not?

I really, really don’t like movie covers or TV covers. If it means missing out on a great read because of the covers then I will more than do it. I have written about this before a year ago I think and said “I don’t know where this small rage has started and built up and built up I just cannot stand them. I am not alone one Book Group we had been discussing ‘Chocolat’ after I was raving about the film to everyone, yet haven’t read the book. One member said ‘I nearly bought that once but it had the film cover on the front and I didn’t want Johnny Depp feeding whatserface Chocolate like it was his phallus on the cover in my hands on the tube’. And it’s true we do care about what people think of what we are reading even subconsciously. From a marketing perspective I can understand that people might want to be seen reading the latest movie but why with a horrid vile cover, they are always so glossy it’s sickly.” This was also after I had seen that in some book shops they were selling the movie cover versions of Ian McEwan’s ‘Atonement’ and Cormac McCarthy’s ‘No Country For Old Men’ for half the price of the non movie cover copies. Madness, infuriating madness.

I was filled with dread that the BBC would have done a Little Dorrit on us, I actually refused to review that book based on the book cover, its a huge book and I would be carting that cover around with me for weeks, no thank you. Imagine my surprise when I looked up ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ on a bookstore website and I find that the BBC and Penguin have done something quite spectacular… not created a horrible TV Version cover for the tie-in edition. It’s actually a really lovely cover and has made me want the book even more now. Maybe I am unwell? However I will wait as I have sworn off buying piles and piles of books as have so many in the house.

...Mind you if I was sent a copy that wouldn’t count would it? Hint, hint.