Sunday, May 15, 2011

Judge a Book by its Cover

I am 100% guilty of this when it comes to books.

Some books with hideous covers require a glowing recommendation for me to pick them up.

I have read quite a few "ugly on the outside, brilliant on the inside" books but, WOW, nothing beats a gorgeous dust jacket.

So, without further ado, here are a couple of my favorite book covers:


Not all of these books are great- in fact some I really disliked, but that just goes to show you: lovely outside doesn't always means there's much going on in the inside!

Now, tell me, do you judge a book by it's cover? What are some of your favorite covers?

P.S. Next time we'll talk about TITLES & how a bad title will turn me off from a book BIG TIME.

9 comments:

this little piggy . . . said...

I must say that YES I totally judge a book by the cover and sadly the font on the cover to be really detailed bout it. I have always kinda felt that if you don't bother trying to attract people to your book in a huge store like B&N then why should I even look it's way. Sad I know, but to be honest the last time I was complimented I had taken time to pick out an outfit & do up my face. I never get such compliments when I am in my laundry outfit, lol.

Unknown said...

I also judge a book by its cover. There was a time when I wanted to become a book cover designer and name the company something like "judge a book by its cover". But true, not always a good cover makes a good book! I'll have to get back to you on which covers I love... :)

TLF said...

Yep, I'm also more likely to pick up something with a pretty cover. :)

Smithy said...

I totally judge books by their covers. it can be really embarrassing to carry around a lame-covered book (e.g., Vampire Academy). That said, I totally thought authors picked the cover until we went to that one book signing, so it must be even worse for the author to end up with a bad cover.

Unknown said...

do i even need to answer this? i totally judge a book by its cover, and have put off reading a book for years, although it came highly recommended, because the cover was so ugly. and i blush at the library while checking out books with ugly covers.

my favorite book covers are the books designed by coralie bickford-smith. i love cloth bound books with one or two colored graphics. i'm not much for the realistic photography, or cheesy grins or things that are too literal. but i know that's not very practical. still...

Anonymous said...

I picked up James Frey's A Million Little Pieces because of the cover. It's still one of the greatest books I've ever read even with all of the Oprah controversy. Covers don't mean much anymore since I have a Nook. I see them, but they're tiny so they don't make as much of an impact.

Katie said...

The first one that comes to mind is "The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate." The cover is beautiful.

It's funny how you can tell when a book was published by the cover. Like the books with '80's hairstyles - even if they are set in a totally different period - because they were published in the 80's.

I used to hate that some of the covers of some of the Anne books weren't very accurately painted.

Esther Noelle said...

Yes, got to have a good cover! Kind of like a guy, something about the outside needs to catch your attention and then it's the inside that determines if it'll be a real love or not. :)

Autumn said...

I'm critical of book covers but since I don't usually read anything that hasn't been recommended to me by a friend I can't really say it weighs heavily on whether or not it gets read. I do have definite favorites though. And it's always a plus when a good book has a good cover (like Okay For Now by Gary Schmidt) but it is a huge letdown when an awesome cover is on a dumb book (Hush, Hush for instance). I think I'm more critical of the books title on whether or not I'll read it and the books ending on whether or not I liked it. BTW I like all the covers you picked even though I've only read one of the books, which I didn't think was very good haha.