It began snowing late last night, and by the time I woke up this morning, the view out of my halls window was one of Liverpool as a white, peaceful, slow little world. Woke my boyfriend up in a fit of excitement and we had a lovely breakfast and then headed out, throwing snowballs at each other on the way.
Headed towards the cathedral to start off with, and took some lovely pictures which I might put up later of Liverpool in the snow.
It’s my birthday tomorrow, and my lovely boyfriend took me to Waterstones and I chose two books, which I’ll read and review a bit on here once I’m done with ‘The Casual Vacancy’.
The first: ‘The Hundred Year Old Who Climbed out of The Window and Disappeared’ by Jonas Jonasson.On first impressions, I love this book. It has a great opening chapter (quickly read perched on the edge of a Waterstones bookshelf) and seems just up my street.
I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but you can only stick to that to a certain extent. If we were to ignore a book’s cover, firstly and most obviously, how would we differentiate books, and secondly, what would make us pick the book off the shelf? I love books, and beautiful books are ones that appeal to me even more (see the latest edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels)
The latest cover of ‘The Great Gatsby’
The cover of ‘The Hundred Year Old Man…’ is cool, for lack of a better word. It’s not beautiful, like the cover above, but it’s interesting to the eye and it’s quite graphic. I like the division into four sections, and the various blues juxtaposed against each other. Take a look.
The book immediately has a sense of humour about it, which I love. Covers like this are great for the simple reason that they give a book its identity before it is even read. Another great example of this is ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time’ by Mark Haddon, where the cover artist has introduced humour through the way the dogs little arms comically stick up from the strange image on the front.
The other book bought for me today was ‘Londoners’ by Craig Taylor. This book I had scouted out whilst doing my Christmas shopping but I couldn’t think of anyone to buy it for. I usually do this – choose presents based upon what I like, hoping against hope that the person receiving it will enjoy it too. This book presents London from the point of view of people from many different backgrounds, and I can’t wait to read it. Books like this interest me, and with London as a subject matter I just couldn’t turn it down. London is one of my favourite cities. I try to get down there whenever I can, but it can be difficult sometimes what with studying, working, etc, things get in the way, as things do. So I can’t wait to read this book, and get my little taste of London. My London fix.
I can certainly agree with you on this. You don’t want to judge a book by its cover, but at the same time, if the cover doesn’t capture your interest you’re not very likely to pick it up. I hope I did well with my book cover. It’s not out in libraries or stores yet, but it is for sale. I just hope Through the Eyes of A Stranger captures the ‘eye.’
lol
Definitely! Its a bit of a paradox. I’d love to see a copy of your book if it’s possible – do you have a link to a page where I can read or look about it? Thanks for your comment!
I just posted the links to where you can check out and/or purchase the book. The cover is also in this post. I hope you like it!
Thanks for the interest! By the way, if you don’t get the post direct, on my blog it is posted under the Writing category.
FYI, we are going to be putting the electronic versions and one of the paperback versions on a special price. Just to let you know so you don’t miss out on a deal!
We will be posting it shortly. Thanks!
By the way… I love puns too!
Wordplay rocks!
” firstly and most obviously, how would we differentiate books, and secondly, what would make us pick the book off the shelf?”
Not obvious to me at all :> , I only do recommaded, found-on-wikipeida-authors or some other ‘best of’ lists, but apart from chosing I do love a pretty cover
Yeah there’s no doubt that a pretty cover will help you pick out a book! But if there’s a more expensive, pretty one, or a cheaper, more boring one, I’d definitely go for the cheaper – the content is the same after all!
I meant to write a sort of similar post, but dealing with the cover art of music albums and how that appreciation is pretty much lost since people tend to download the songs they like (rather than the whole album). On the other hand even that appreciation has to be entirely different nowadays, as the formats keep getting smaller (from an LP record to a CD to a thumbnail on your phone). I wonder if that will happen with books too, as we move from the physical object to having them on an electronic device. Maybe the cover art of books will begin to be less important too?
Gosh yeah – that’s something that I suppose will come to light within the next few years. But I suppose if there’s only that small thumbnail picture and a blurb to go by when buying an ebook (you can’t flick through and read a random page) perhaps the cover will be just as important as it is now. When you get round to writing that post I’d love to read it – so please send me a link when it’s done! Thank you for your comment