Like many people I collect ‘things’. I collect some things deliberately – like books, DVDs and Magic 8 Balls. Other things I seem to collect almost inadvertently like bottles of nail polish and drug pens (you know the ones with advertising on them for pharmaceuticals?). Anyway, when I am collecting something that I intend to keep it makes me all warm and fuzzy when it looks all nice and uniform on my shelves. Say for example I have been collecting The West Wing on DVD which I have done because it’s one of my favourite shows and I’ve watched them all about three times and I know I’ll watch it again some day and also…. I just want to own my own copies. Seasons 1 & 2 originally came out in those chunky cardboard boxsets (half season boxes at that) which I duly purchased. A year or so later they released Seasons 1 – 4 in those double sized plastic DVD cases which vexed me somewhat because they no longer matched my old cardboard ones. So I repurchased Seasons 1 & 2 when I bought Seasons 3 & 4 and resold my old cardboard ones on eBay. No big deal – I’m just a bit anal retentive like that… but whatever. Then Season 5 was released and it was the same which good … but when the final Seasons 6 & 7 were released they were in single DVD cases and seeing that I had no desire to go and spend the money over again – they no longer make a cohesive aesthetic set on my bookcase…. and this annoys the living crap out of me 🙁
It’s not just The West Wing either – it was The Sopranos too, The Harry Potter DVDs, Bewitched and countless other so called ‘sets’ (which by definition implies that they will be a group or combination of things that are similar in design and/or function) too… lots of them do it for some reason. And it’s not just limited to DVD collections either – Books. ‘They’ – the powers that be (read complete and utter knobs who design and market stuff) do it to books too.
I’ve been reading Jasper Fforde lately – in particular the Thursday Next series. I know, I know it’s so unusual for me to get into a sci-fi/fantasy series given that I’m usually more into classic literature. But Fforde’s sci-fi novels incorporate lots of references to the classics (Bronte, Gaskell, Austen, Dickens, Tolstoy, Elliot and of course Shakespeare) and there’s lots of clever little literary in-jokes which creates the most marvellous juxtapositions between highbrow literature and lowbrow absurdity that it makes for absolutely ‘hang onto your hat’ hilarious reading. So far I’ve read ‘The Eyre Affair’, ‘Lost in a Good Book’ and ‘The Well of Lost Plots’ and am about to start reading the fourth novel in the series ‘Something Rotten’. I have also purchased two of his other novels ‘The Big Over Easy and ‘The Fourth Bear’ which are in a related by different series based around Detective Jack Spratt. Where was I going with this again….? Oh yeah. The damn covers. I have been looking to purchase the fifth novel in the Thursday Next series which is called ‘First Among Sequels’ and guess what? They’ve changed the artwork (on the Australian released version of the novel – the UK cover matches nicely) so that it looks NOTHING LIKE THE REST OF THE SERIES!!! Why???
Fuckers. Needless to say I haven’t purchased this new book yet because the cover sets my aesthetic teeth on edge. I’ve been keeping an eye out for it hoping that it will eventually be released with a similar design to the rest of them but so far my efforts have been twarted and at this rate I’ll likely end up ordering a copy on Amazon.co.uk which will cost me twice the prices 🙁 Soooo not happy with my wash!
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