Sparrow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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books2010-06-16 01:30 pm
sweet_sparrow) wrote in books2010-06-16 01:30 pm
Cover me!
I'm curious, what's everyone's opinions on book covers?
Would you rather we return to the olden days when a cover consisted of the title and author's name or does the modern idea of pictures appeal to you? Do you base (some of) your book buys on the fact that they have a pretty cover (or, flip side, do you refuse to touch a book because you hate the cover)?
Do you want your series covers to match in style or do you just not care about the covers or way or another?
What about dustjackets? Useful or just a pain?
I'm asking because two of the books I ordered this week didn't have the cover the online stores presented me with. I was... Actually, I'm not sure what I was. Annoyed, I think. I ordered them from those sites precisely because they showed me the cover I was after.
Okay, for full disclosure, I'm talking about the old and reissue covers for Dawn Cook's Truth series. I fell in love with the reissue cover for book 4, and I do aesthetically prefer the new covers over the old ones, even if the old covers do suit the books a lot better.
It got me thinking, again, about my opinion on covers and how they affect my bookish habits.
For series, I definitely like my covers to match if at all possible, but it's more important that the books are all the same size. Matching covers just look neater and tidier on the shelves. (This includes series comprised of stand-alone books like the Penguin Classics.)
For stand-alone books I'm a lot more... open? I don't get swayed to buy or not-buy books based on the cover and it's only in recenter years that I've even begun to really notice covers. A pretty cover does not an interesting book make.
Yet, that said, if I know I'm going to buy a specific book and there are multiple covers available I'm liable to go for the one that I think is prettiest. It depends on whether I think the pretty is worth the price difference.
I can definitely be a cover snob at times, though to date I've only replaced six covers with prettier, Shanra-friendlier ones. (And five of those six books came in the same boxset!) And sometimes I'll (try to) track down specific covers for nostalgia reasons, but this is fairly rare since 'nostalgia' tends to include 'Dutch' for me and I've pretty much stopped reading in my native language.
Some of my books are old enough to have come without dust jackets - or at least old enough to pretend they did - and there is something I find incredibly appealing about them. ^-^ No idea what it is, though. I don't think I'd be happy to see cover images disappear, but I can't say I'd mind terribly either.
And I dislike dust jackets. They keep slipping and sliding around my book. Gah!
Would you rather we return to the olden days when a cover consisted of the title and author's name or does the modern idea of pictures appeal to you? Do you base (some of) your book buys on the fact that they have a pretty cover (or, flip side, do you refuse to touch a book because you hate the cover)?
Do you want your series covers to match in style or do you just not care about the covers or way or another?
What about dustjackets? Useful or just a pain?
I'm asking because two of the books I ordered this week didn't have the cover the online stores presented me with. I was... Actually, I'm not sure what I was. Annoyed, I think. I ordered them from those sites precisely because they showed me the cover I was after.
Okay, for full disclosure, I'm talking about the old and reissue covers for Dawn Cook's Truth series. I fell in love with the reissue cover for book 4, and I do aesthetically prefer the new covers over the old ones, even if the old covers do suit the books a lot better.
It got me thinking, again, about my opinion on covers and how they affect my bookish habits.
For series, I definitely like my covers to match if at all possible, but it's more important that the books are all the same size. Matching covers just look neater and tidier on the shelves. (This includes series comprised of stand-alone books like the Penguin Classics.)
For stand-alone books I'm a lot more... open? I don't get swayed to buy or not-buy books based on the cover and it's only in recenter years that I've even begun to really notice covers. A pretty cover does not an interesting book make.
Yet, that said, if I know I'm going to buy a specific book and there are multiple covers available I'm liable to go for the one that I think is prettiest. It depends on whether I think the pretty is worth the price difference.
I can definitely be a cover snob at times, though to date I've only replaced six covers with prettier, Shanra-friendlier ones. (And five of those six books came in the same boxset!) And sometimes I'll (try to) track down specific covers for nostalgia reasons, but this is fairly rare since 'nostalgia' tends to include 'Dutch' for me and I've pretty much stopped reading in my native language.
Some of my books are old enough to have come without dust jackets - or at least old enough to pretend they did - and there is something I find incredibly appealing about them. ^-^ No idea what it is, though. I don't think I'd be happy to see cover images disappear, but I can't say I'd mind terribly either.
And I dislike dust jackets. They keep slipping and sliding around my book. Gah!