Covers I Have Gazed At

For this Thursday's entry, I thought I'd return to the superficial. In case anyone thought the real me had been kidnapped these last two weeks and replaced by a thoughtful imposter...

Now it's true that you can't judge a book by its cover. Put another way, a nice cover is a thing apart, and I'd wager that many of those who'd have dismissed covers as facile and trivial a few years ago would now leap to their defence now that the physical beauty of a real book is one of its last defences against the electronic form. Some books have great covers and equally great insides; I think this is a happy coincidence, when it happens. I've just done a survey of my favourite covers from bookshelves - results shown below:

Fig. 1 Cool cover, good writing.

Fig. 2 Unknown Pleasures-ish cover, interesting story

 Fig. 3 Pink cover, but very good novel (wooo!)

Fig. 4 Fabulous cover that actually rather put the novel in the shade, when it came to it

Fig. 5 Strangely soothing cover, interesting and spiky set of novels

Fig. 6 Subtly disturbing cover, unsubtle but admittedly well-written novel

Fig. 7 Truly beautiful cover, and slightly depressing novel that probably ended a friendship of mine due to a daft misunderstanding that arose when I explained the plot...