I love a good book cover. Book covers are so powerful to me that I will drop $20 bones just because a book cover is good. I should know better, I know. It’s like wanting to date the prettiest boy in school. Just ’cause he’s pretty doesn’t mean he’ll be a great boyfriend. But, still, a pretty boy won’t make me turn my head. A pretty book cover. I’m a sucker for it. And I love it when the book is then just as divine as its cover.
I was all pins and needles waiting to see the cover of Hijas Americanas because I wanted it to be brilliant and evocative.
I was so pleased with the final result and you can read the whole story about the cover here.
Now, it is hard for me to write a book without thinking about the cover– even though the cover usually comes later in the process. Right now, I am all about imagining covers for the book that I am working on right now. I don’t have a definitive view of it yet, but I have been trying to recall covers that I have loved while brainstorming (like The Middle Place cover featured above).
Here are just a few book covers that took my breath:
What I am noticing about these covers is that they are all photographic in nature and they evoke a feeling that the book also evokes. I’m eager to have many more book covers in mind when it comes time to talk about the cover for book # 2. What have been your favorite book covers? What book did you buy because of its cover?
I don’t know if I “buy it” because of the cover as much as I have def NOT bought it because of the cover….because it did not engage me enough to even pick it up off the self…or to even read the back….then it doesnt get bought……
I like all of the ones you have featured on the blog, I haven’t read them-but am now interested. *smile*
The cover and name of “the hole in our gospel” caught my attention because there is no image of the Bible on the cover…but of the earth as a whole/hole….
Well, “Written On the Body” and most Jeanette Winterson books are amazing, so it makes sense that the cover is too. And well, growing up mixed race in America can be both beautiful and intense, so that gorgeous cover of “Waking Up American” accurately portrays both that beauty and intensity. Covers have to catch your attention; right now I am reading an incredible book called “City of Widows: An Iraqi Woman’s Account of War and Resistance” by Haifa Zangana and the worst part is that you can barely read the title on the front cover… hardly any one can see what I am reading in public… sometimes just by seeing covers on my morning commute I write down titles…