#post-text

A macaroon is a type of small circular cake, typically made from ground almonds (the original main ingredient) or coconut (and/or other nuts or even potato), with sugar and egg white. Macaroons are often baked on edible rice paper placed on a baking tray. The word 'macaroon' comes from the Italian maccarone or maccherone meaning 'paste', referring to the original almond paste ingredient; this word itself derives from ammaccare, meaning to bruise.

I was reading this post and one of the pictures got me thinking about hard-cover books and  how much I hate the dust jacket.

A quick Google of "I hate dust jackets" returned 101,000 results. So I am definitely not alone in this sentiment. A lot of people hate them and actually throw them away. I could never do that. I hate the plain hard cover even more than dust jackets. They're just so... boring.

Does this mean I hate hard covers all together? Not at all. I used to have a 70 year old Charles Dickens Anthology. It was lovely and in great condition. This is the reason for hard covers. Durability. 

Dust covers are not durable

I don't want to shock you, but dust covers are fragile. It is a single piece of paper. To keep them in great condition, you have to treat them as such. This means handling them very carefully. Which kind of counters the usefulness of the durability of a hard cover.

Dust covers do not stay in place

This is the most annoying aspect of dust covers. When you are reading the book you can choose to put up with this, being careful with how you hold the book and sacrificing a bit of comfort.

Your other choice is to remove the jacket completely. However, he place you place it might put it in harm's way, since without the book, it becomes even more fragile.

The other problem with a loose jacket if the jacket is slightly low, you will damage it when placing the book back on the shelf.

Is there a solution?

To a degree. For people like me, the solution is to build the jacket design directly into the hard cover. I quite often see this in the non-fiction section and for hard cover release's of comic books.

I found a great example of this on flavorwire article against hard covers. The UK edition of the hard cover Harry Potter series has the design built into it.

These books have no dust jacket, just beautiful yet durable hard covers.

Okay, so for the past week, I have really been putting a lot of effort into the Jennifer Fallon Fan blog.

Completely Redone theme based on the Pragmatist Theme. I chose this theme to work with, because I like the way it handles different screen sizes. I plan to make it look and feel more like a traditional website, rather that a tumblr page.

It has had a fair amount of reworking though, and when I am done that very little will be original. 

The changes so far:

90% of the 'customise' options have been removed.

Background image cut down to 50kb

Completely new Twitter Widget that Completely integrates with the Page. (Will make this into it's own post, promise)

Moved published details underneath titles, including author info

Added More Social Sharing options using the AddThis

Gave Photo Posts Titles above the post, just like Text Posts. (Will make this into a post too)

Created brand new social icons using vectors (DrawPlus X5). My first experience with vectors too mostly following branding guidelines.

Made all the icons into CSS Sprites image to cut down http requests.

All icons, also have rollover versions

Made a new sidebar section to subscribe via tumblr / rss / email / pinterest / twitter

Added Like and reblog buttons to index and permalink pages

Learnt about Pinterest, Added a behind-the-scenes function to add invisible images as a pinterest option. (harder than you'd think)

Added a behind-the-scenes functionality to Text Posts to designate if an images is to float:left (word wrap)

Reworked the blockquote styles.

Still to Do

Rework the styles for post types that aren't text /photo posts.

Change the font for titles

Change link styles. I don't like the bg style, prefer the underline.

Rework the 'Read More' button

Change all post titles to h2, for better accessability

Add comment system (Probaby Livefyre)

Add rollover effects to like and reblog buttons

move notes next to like button and match styling to the add this sharing widget

hide/minimize twitter widget in single column mode.

fix the bug with photoset lightbox

make photosets responsive as well

modify menu in single column mode, currently inteferes with footer text

Plus many more tiny things