This week’s theme from Ok, Let’s Read is about covers:
Are you someone who likes your books to look very uniform or do you usually not care to much about that? How do you react when there’s a cover change in the middle of a series? What are your opinions on movie-tie-in covers with the actors from the movie adaptation? Which book covers are your favorites?
I’m not too bothered about covers. It does annoy me when I’ve been collecting a series for a long time and then the covers change — Robin Hobb, sorry, I’m looking at you. I had nine books and then the covers changed, what’s with that? Also, I quite liked my old set of Neil Gaiman books: I sometimes find the old editions still on sale, but there’s a lot more variation in the covers now. Probably because he’s written more children’s books, graphic stories like Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, but still, rar! But it doesn’t bother me too much, especially when I’m collecting the series in ebook. I’m pretty resigned to it, I think: I can be quite obsessive about other things, and it’s not particularly good for me!
Movie tie-in covers… I’m not a big fan, because I usually think they’re not as nice as the original covers, and sometimes I am so not in favour of the casting, etc. Especially when it’s white-washed. I don’t know if they ever made tie-in covers for the Earthsea TV series where Ged was white, but I wouldn’t touch that with a barge pole.
My favourite book covers tend to be ones with really pretty fantasy art. Kinuko Craft and Thomas Canty do good stuff. Just pulling from the covers I already have loaded on here, here’s some Kinuko Craft and Thomas Canty…
Wow, these are gorgeous! I haven’t heard of them, though, are they as good to read as they are to look at? 🙂
And I totally agree with you on the Earthsea cover – it’s horrible. I sometimes pity the poor authors because they usually don’thave much say in this… I imagine Le Guin getting her author’s copies and breaking down in tears, the poor old dear.
Yep! Or at least, I don’t know about the Steven Brust one yet; I’ve enjoyed his other work, but I don’t know what I’ll think of this one. I think it’s a rewritten folk tale? But McKillip, I do love everything she writes, and very much enjoyed Alphabet of Thorn.
Yeaaaah. What’s weird is, I never thought about it until there was a kerfuffle about Justine Larbelestier’s Liar cover being whitewashed. Since then, I always notice.
I guess I can be a bit finicky if I am collecting the actual books – I don’t like the movie tie in and I usually only like to collect the art covers. Sometimes they change to a photograph and I’ve always had a fondness for the art covers. I adore the covers of the selection you placed above. They are beautiful.
I think it helps that a lot of my books are digital, now. The cover doesn’t matter so much. If I’m collecting something to keep, I either like it to match completely or be a complete mess, heh. But yeah, art covers are nearly always the best.
I’m not sure this is so much a complaint about covers per se, but I hate when publishers change the covers and paper, and all of the sudden the book is smaller, hard to hold, and difficult to see. Looking at you, new Poirot reprints 🙁
I actually hate the really big editions, heh. All my John Scalzi books are huuuge and I don’t like it.