BiblioAddict

I felt bad, when I was younger, for picking books based solely on their cover. As a young impressionable child, with the admonitions of the school librarian ringing in my ears (that old adage: “Never judge a book by its cover.”), I would always check out at least one book with a particularly attractive cover and one book with a cover about as dull and limp as dirty dishwater. Then, I’d carefully and slowly put aside the more fun looking of the two – teaching myself the merits of delayed-gratification (a lesson I still haven’t fully learned) – and crack open the torn, boring cover of the second book.

Half the time I was lucky, and found great stories sandwiched between the covers with cheesy drawings and faded colors. “It’s a diamond in the rough!” I’d go around proclaiming, trying to impress all who would listen with a line I’d picked up from Aladdin (the Disney movie, not the book).

In any case, I learned to appreciate that not all books are as terrible as they look (nor are all books as great as their covers), but now that I’m older, I’m able to admit unapologetically that darn it I like a good cover.

A good cover gets you excited about what’s inside. It makes you think – albeit subconsciously – If they took such care on the cover, how much care did they take on the story?! Of course, that logic isn’t very sound. So let me say that we all enjoy holding a piece of great art in our hands, and book covers are art.

Having said that, The Book Design Review Chicago is hosting its annual contest of favorite book covers of 2007. Some of these covers are impressively beautiful. I’m particularly taken with THE WORST YEARS OF YOUR LIFE, SIX DEGREES: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, ONE PERFECT DAY, BRAVE NEW WORLD, THE CHESS MACHINE, and THE CIGARETTE CENTURY.

It’s going to take some thought to pick the cover I like the most, but I’m leaning toward CIGARETTE CENTURY cover since it’s the only one that inspired a “Wow” when I saw it. And here’s something I didn’t expect: just how difficult it is to judge a book by its cover, not its content – or rather, how interested I am in reading said content. Some of these books I just have no desire to read (Denis Johnson’s TREE OF SMOKE for one – nothing against either the book or Johnson, I’m just not all that interested). I’ve found myself having to consciously divorce my disinterest in the book from my opinion of its cover.

But, there were more than a few books on the list that I’d never heard of before, and their covers have certainly encouraged me to do some further research into their content. It’s likely that I’ll add more than one of these books to my grotesquely obese TBR list. After all, looking at a great cover is nice, but reading a great book is even nicer.