A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words...

The October 18, 2010 New Yorker cover features a wall of books with mini-faces looking askance at a man sitting in a comfortable armchair in front of the tall bookshelves but with his back to them, completely absorbed in his laptop and i-pod. The books' spines have their own personalities, with various facial features (glasses, mustache, beard, mouth open, eyebrows raised, etc.) and with different facial expressions ranging from horror to sadness to helplessness to resignation. It's a humorous but sad evocation of the way technology distracts people from books.