Let’s Talk Bookish – Book Covers

Aria @ Book Nook Bits is the new host for Let’s Talk Bookish! If you aren’t following her yet, good check out her blog and give her a follow!

March 15:  Book Covers (Davida Chazan)

Prompts: Do you ever get a book with a beautiful cover that is way better than the book itself? Or book covers that really just don’t fit the books? Some books have lots of different covers, for different countries and special editions. Are there any books with some great covers and some terrible ones?

Welcome back to another week of LTB here at DTRH, everyone! Today’s book is all about beautiful book covers, which I think resonates with most of us here in the community. Who doesn’t like a nice cover to go with a good story?

There are many times where a book with a beautiful cover is frankly just better than the story itself. That being said, I can see the use of having beautiful books with okay stories on your shelf just to serve as either a decoration piece or even a coffee table book. That’s for sure the danger of buying books solely based on a cover and a synopsis. However, even if I’m not the most impressed by the story, it’s usually not a regret to have purchased the book. I think there’s some intrinsic joy of just owning and looking at a pretty book, and I’ll stand by that.

Sometimes the book cover is also just not appropriate for the story. But unless you’ve read the story, you wouldn’t even know that. In that case it’s basically just a cover that looks good. This only really has ramifications if you’re introducing the book to someone else and need a disclaimer that the cover is a bit mismatched. In my experience though, people don’t mind when the cover is a little bit different from what the book is. After all, part of the joy is reading the book not knowing what will transpire too.

I didn’t previously know that so many books had alternate covers. Now sometimes what happens is that I want to purchase a book, but I may not be the biggest fan of the cover in my region. That leads me down the rabbit hole of finding a cover that is good, or if it’s popular enough, possibly even waiting for a special edition cover to come out. Can people relate to that? Especially with our limited bookshelf space and wallets these days, I feel like I must be selective with which books end up on my shelves, so now I find myself looking far and wide for special and unique book (or book covers, at least) in order to justify my purchase.

I’m not going to point out the bad covers, because I think they know who they are. But I have recently really enjoyed A Magic Steeped in Poison‘s cover, and I also enjoy most thriller’s covers, even if they are mostly the same. The way a book is just able to give you a sense of the story without you ever even picking it up is really cool, and I think murder mysteries have kind of got that down pat.

What do you all think about book covers? Or do you not care about them at all? Let me know what some of your favourite covers are, I’d love to see them if I haven’t already—who doesn’t appreciate good art? I think those artists should get some credit too. Let me know which covers we should take a look at in the comments below!