As longtime readers know, I'm a fan of the most basic and uniform cover design, and the austere French covers favored by many of my favorite publishers -- P.O.L., Éditions de Minuit. Gallimard, Albin Michel -- are, indeed my ideals (a couple of Germans do this stuff well, too: some of the Suhrkamp series -- Bibliothek Suhrkamp; editions suhrkamp; stw -- or the little yellow Reclam books).
Now, in The Independent, Jonathan Gibbs considers French covers in his Friday Book Design Blog: French holiday special, noting that in France, indeed:
As to the book by (Windows On The World-author) Frédéric Beigbeder, Derniere inventaire avant liquidation: as he realizes in the appended footnote, it's not a personal top fifty list (indeed, Beigbeder notes: "Si j'avais dû faire le tri moi-même, ma liste eût été très différente" -- and his does sound considerably more interesting), but rather:
book covers, or literary ones, at any rate, tend to stick to the tried and tested format of text only, (no images ! non, non, non ! pas du tout !)His three examples aren't entirely typical, but it's an amusing enough case-study -- and I have to admit he's right about the covers for the Collection L'Imaginaire from Gallimard ("they are all, almost without exception, awful") -- but, ignoring the covers: damn, that's an impressive collection, text-wise.
As to the book by (Windows On The World-author) Frédéric Beigbeder, Derniere inventaire avant liquidation: as he realizes in the appended footnote, it's not a personal top fifty list (indeed, Beigbeder notes: "Si j'avais dû faire le tri moi-même, ma liste eût été très différente" -- and his does sound considerably more interesting), but rather:
Ces 50 œuvres écrites ont été choisies par les 6 000 Français qui ont renvoyé un bulletin distribué par la FNAC et Le Monde pendant l'été 1999You can find the whole list (and, apparently, text) here -- and it's really not half-bad (French-heavy though it is) for this kind of exercise involving the masses.