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.
[/smug]
the murakami is veering into illustrative territory- using photography.. I love it. I love the last jew- reminds me of the old penguin pocket classics… perhaps you should investigate purely typographic book covers as yet another category.
Yes, I thought so too, about the Murakami. I realized I recognized almost every cover in the article, which suggests how striking they are.