In the next few weeks I will be starting the penguin competition book design brief, for 'one hundred years of solitude' I haven't read this book before, but hear it's a modern classic.
So to be prepared and ready to start designing for the cover, I purchased a copy of the book today to make a head start on reading it.
If, I end up not having enough time to finish the book, I will pick a key chapter or paragraph and base the front cover design on that smaller passage of text.