A Strange Cover

I can admit, whole-heartedly, that I will always judge a book’s cover art. This does not always deter me from reading a book I find interesting, either because I am familiar with the title, author or story, but it is definitely the thing that can drive me to purchasing a book without knowing much about it. There is one book in particular that has my most favorite cover. I was given this book to read for a book club during sophomore year of high school. It is a fantastic story and still one of my favorite books. This book is I’ll Give you the Sun by Jandy Nelson. Something different about this book though is that the copy I was given from my local library did not have the title on the front of the book. As a replacement there was a quote from the book. The words were rainbow, holographic and extremely pretty, and I found it to be incredibly interesting. After reading the novel, it only furthered my belief that good books have good covers. There are other copies of the book that are printed with a different cover, but the one with the quote will always be my favorite.

              Something I have always found interesting though, were people’s different opinions on the covers of books. For me, I love it when a book has a unique cover, it has to stand out for me to pick it up. I’ll admit I did buy Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff solely because the of the cool cover. It was designed like a classified document where more was revealed after removing the dust jacket. I still have yet to read it or know what it is about, so for right now, it’s just nice to look at. For me, a good cover has bright colors, exciting patterns and no people. I don’t know why but I always dislike when there is a person on the cover of my book. I start to feel like the book is pressuring me to imagine the characters the way it imagines them. The difference though, is that some of my friends love having people on the cover of books, the same way I’ve had friends that hated that I’ll Give You the Sun didn’t have the title. One book in particular was given to me by a friend a few years ago. She gave me the book, with a warning that the dust jacket was very ugly and that there was a better cover underneath. The book was The Forever Song by Julie Kanagawa. The first cover of the book had a purple background with white birds creating an infinity sign. When I took the dust jacket off, the entire cover was a medium shot of a girl’s head. I did not like it at all and actually thought the dust jacket was really pretty. It made me think, every time I judge a cover for being really ugly, that style was just made for another person’s preference.