How to Hide the Saucy Book You're Reading in Plain Sight

I'm not normally embarrassed of anything I'm reading, but if I am it probably has to do with sex or Nazis. 

It's not what you think. 

I was recently talking to my partner about how I wanted to read this satirical novel about what would happen if Hitler came back to modern day Germany––in which a woman is running the country and immigration has made for a diverse population.  The novel's answer? Make him into a celebrity because no one would take his ranting seriously because they'd think he was a character actor who refused to break character. They'd blame it on the cult of personality and make him famous. 

And if you think that sounds like a crazy premise for a novel, think again. It's really not even far fetched considering that the US is currently being run by Cheeto Hitler, tiny hand orange man, who basically did just that. Reviews I've read online say it was a scary prediction of what was to come in the US. 

But anyway, the book's genre is satire. However, I still worry about people seeing me read this book in public and what wrongful assumptions they might make about me. I mean, satire or not, the novel is about Hitler. (To be honest, I would be cringing just as much if the book were about Trump.)

I realize the easy solution to worrying about what people might think is to just leave the book at home, but I tend to carry books with me everywhere, so I wouldn't do well with the idea of not letting a book leave the house.  

And, sure, I could just buy the novel as an ebook and read on my Nook and anyone who sees me would be none the wiser. But even though I'm all for ebooks, after working all day on the computer and writing on my laptop and doing all the other things one uses a laptop or phone for during the day, the last thing I feel like doing is staring into another screen. 

Fortunately, my partner came up with the perfect solution. He said, "Just buy it in hardcover and switch out the dust jacket with another book."  

Simple, yet brilliant. 

Of course, you'd have to use the dust jacket of a book of equal size and you'd have to know what the dust jacket book was about in case anyone asked. 

All that to say, if you catch me out in public over the next few months and I'm reading a hardcover copy of All The Light We Cannot See or one of the Harry Potter books, it's probably actually a copy of Look Who's Back. I figure I'd better read up and prepare for the next four years.

Who knows if the novel will be enlightening, but political satire has been on my mind a lot lately. I read Welcome to Braggsville recently and also just bought Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here. On top of that, another political satire, The Sellout, won the Man Booker Prize last year, so the genre seems to be gaining popularity.

Have you ever wanted to hide a book you were reading? Tell me about it in the comments below!