LUCY PICK BOOKS

Last April I wrote a post on what makes a good cover, and I mentioned that I especially liked the cover for Laurie Groff’s The Monsters of Templeton

Turns out I was not the only one. My friend Tamara alerted me to a fascinating article called 30 Books Worth Buying for their Covers Alone, and I was delighted to see that Ms Groff’s book made the cut. The other 29 covers are worth checking out as well. I own Heaney’s Beowulf and Cooley’s The Archivist and have been drawn to many of the others. It is interesting to note that, with the eexception of the Heaney, the Cooley, and the cover for Murakami’s South of the Border, West of the Sun, all the books on the list use illustrations rather than photographs for their cover art. Which was kind of the point of my original post.

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While my sister was visiting me this past week, we spent a lot of time together judging books by their covers. This cover, for Lauren Groff’s The Monsters of Templeton was one we both loved, and though neither of us bought it, I am sure I will one day soon. Almost as good as the cover is the groovy map inside. I am a sucker for maps.

My sister said she prefers covers that have illustrations, and she is winning me over to her point of view. Best are covers like Groff’s, which were drawn specifically for the book. I also think of the covers for the hardcovers of Dorothy Dunnett’s Niccolo series (at least the ones I have, which were bought in Canada). In second place, and more common, are paintings and drawings that are reused as illustrations for book covers. We both enjoyed Sarah Johnson’s gallery of reused cover images for works of historical fiction. Sometimes the images were totally transformed in reuse and sometimes … well, let’s just say that certain covers could cause a lot of confusion.