Ever since I was a small child it has
been drilled into me that you must never judge anything on appearance alone;
places, people and most importantly of all – books. No matter what picture
happens to be on the front or what title is written down the spine – you must
never judge a book by its cover.

This is almost always my tactic when
book shopping and it has not failed me yet. Unless a friend has particularly
recommended something, I will not pick up a book that doesn’t catch my eye. I
have betrayed the golden rule of reading. But I am not sorry. When you think
about it, there is no other way to shop for books. When in a bookshop you are
faced with the mammoth task of deciding which book you will buy out of the
hundreds in the room. Yes, you could pick each book up and read them one by one
until you find the few that you like, but that could take hours for only one
section of the shop.

I have found, during my many
Waterstones adventures, that the authors of the kind of books I fall in love
with are also the authors who print books with bright, eye-catching covers. Now,
this may just as easily be because the books I tend to buy are the ones with
colourful covers. All I know is that my favourite bookshelf is a violently beautiful
mess of reds and oranges and blues.
However, despite my tendency towards
book cover racism, I still remain open to just about everything. Though when
buying books I’m more likely to pick up the books with a spine of neon yellow, this
is because they are the most obvious. I still remain opinion-less about all
books until I have read them – I just get a little bit more excited for the
pretty ones. I firmly believe that the colour of the cover does not affect the
quality of the content inside.

I know this is not a popular opinion.
I understand why we must never use this theory on people, but why not judge
books by their covers? We all have
preferences and interests. Even the most self-righteous readers are prone to
‘accidentally’ forgetting to consider the beige book in the top corner of the
shelf. We all do it without even thinking. Really, we’re all a little bit
book-cover-racist. And I say that that
is okay.
I love this post. I always judge books by its covers even though I try not to. When I'm in the book store, the bright ones stick out or the ones that have a prettier looking cover as opposed to the other types of covers. And I will generally pick those up and read the blurb. Sometimes I put it back down because the blurb didn't sound interesting enough but I have still picked up the colourful ones. Great post :)
ReplyDeleteThankyou!! It's just natural isn't it? I'm like a magpie for pretty books! I just NEED them :D I mean I try to be as fair as possible but I just can't help it! Glad it's not only me with this problem :3 It's good to be understood x
DeleteAwesome post! I'm guilty of buying books I already own just because they're beautiful. For instance, Penguin Classics clothbound re-issues. GORGEOUS!
ReplyDeleteoooh! I know! Are you talking about the patterned ones? If not you should look out for them, with the zag-zags and pretty colours. Ooft! They're gorgeous :) Thankyou for even reading my post let alone commenting, it really makes my day
DeleteNo problem! I always love it when people stop by my blog and comment, so I like to share the joy around. :D
DeleteI love this! SO TRUE, I love love the strange and beautiful sorrows of Ava Lavender & A Thousand Pieces of You, they have the most beautiful covers! :)
ReplyDeleteBtw, I tagged you to do the reader problems tag! Check it out here http://booksbyj.blogspot.com/2014/11/book-tag-reader-problems-tag.html
-Jay