You know that old saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover”?
Well let’s be honest. We all do it. We look at a book and say “That looks
boring”, “This has to be a great book”, etc. I feel like a lot of the books I
read are based on the cover picture. And being a girl many of the ones that
seem to catch my eye are the ones that have pictures of pretty dresses on the
cover.
I know I’m not the only one like this. But I have started to
do some research on the ones I dub “boring.” I go online and look for summaries
when the ones on the book don’t suffice. I look on Goodreads to see what the
overall rating is and if I know anyone who has read it and what others thought
about it. And I don’t just do it for the ones that are boring, but also the
ones that look interesting. I found this useful because there was a book that
looked interesting but when I read about it I found out that it was not one
that I wanted to read.
So I guess the saying holds true… In most cases, that is. I
will most likely continue to judge books based on their covers, but thanks to
technology I will give other books a chance.
While we're "on the topic" (kind of), how do you judge books? Or what kinds of covers interest you?
I remember one summer during high school when I checked out a book I thought looked interesting from the public library. The book was not good at all! The content was really bad.
ReplyDeleteHAHA! I think everyone does this. And because I know everyone does this, in high school I would always either take off the dust jacket cover or if it was a paper back book I would make a book cover out of paper. I never liked people judging ME based on the cover of the book I was reading.
ReplyDeleteI don't do that anymore but sometimes I still want to.
I enjoy artsy-looking covers, vintage designs, and great use of font. I don't much care for genre-y covers with shirtless warriors, whimsical woodland creatures, or headless ballgowns.
ReplyDeleteYou've inspired me to do a post over at Non-Fiction on book cover design. Thanks!
Doing this from my windows phone... Wouldn't love it for blogging, but it's alright for comments.
I was really bad at this in high school. It took me some time and effort to realize books with boring covers could be interesting, and even the most amazing covers can hold a terrible story. Now, I base my readings a lot more on recommendations.
ReplyDelete