Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish (click the image to visit them) who pick a different topic each week.
This week the theme is: Cover Trends (likes or dislikes)
Ooh I like this topic because I probably give too much kudos to book covers; I definitely choose a lot of books based on their covers alone. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn’t.
There were just way too many trends to choose from so I’ve split my ten (series count as 1) into two topics and given my favourites and least favourites.
Models & Epic Dresses: I’m not a huge fan of having models on the covers of books. I don’t like going into a story with a picture of what the protagonist may look like, which is why I find it hard to read books after I’ve seen film or TV adaptations.
However, the trend of having models on book covers isn’t something you can avoid anymore, especially in YA Fantasy and Paranormal Romance. And it seems I’m kind of OK with it when there’s hot ladies in pretty dresses on the covers…make of that what you will.
The Good: The Selection Series; Alice in Zombieland; Entwined
The Bad: Vampire Academy; The Mortal Instruments (see the lack of a pretty dresses here just makes them terrible.
Graphics: I don’t really know what to call this category, but I basically mean covers without models, y’know arty/graphicy ones.
The Good: The Mystery Man Series; Scarlet Thomas; The Lunar Chronicles
The Bad: Ruby Redfort; Hunger Games; Rainbow Rowell’s novels.
I really enjoyed two of the Ruby Redfort books but I would never have picked them up if they only had this type of cover. It’s just boring and looks too childish, and that’s why I’ve never picked up any of the Rainbow Rowell books either. The covers just don’t do it for me. But I’ve been told to get over it because they’re great.
And then there’s the Hunger Games. The first edition I saw had this horrific cover and it in no way made me want to read it. In fact, it sat on my flatmate’s shelf for like a year until we decided to read it. And I wanted to cry because we’d left it that long!
Thank the unicorns they sorted that out!
Do you choose books by their covers?