Thursday Thoughts: Covers

Posted September 11, 2014 by in General / 6 Comments

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…

Cover of The Sun and Moon and Stars by Steven Brust 81075 Cover of Wonders of the Invisible World, by Patricia McKillip

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6 responses to “Thursday Thoughts: Covers

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. majoline

    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 🙁

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