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HALL WAYS TALKS BOOK COVERS
It's no accident that I use #coverlove and #booklove a whole
lot. When I was in graduate school in 2011, I went on a kick of exploring all
the covers I could find for books I was about to read. I would find multiple
covers of the book, along with the tag-lines, and discuss. When it suited me, I chose which cover drew me in the most beforehand and then which one most fit
the book afterwards. Or, I would just write snarky commentary about the
messages I thought the covers conveyed. Or I just showed multiple covers. This
was loads of fun for me because, well, I'm me.
I have been mislead by covers, and I have been mislead by cover
blurbs (both of these issues are fodder for a post all their own). I have loved
covers so much that I had to have a place to keep them, so I created a
Pinterest "Beautiful Book Covers" board. But guess what -- there are books
there that I haven't even read. And there are books there that I read and
didn't really like. The point is that book covers are a source of entertainment
and eye-candy for me as much as the stories themselves. I can't imagine life
without book cover art -- but I sort of can.
On my recent excursion to Deep Vellum Books in Dallas, there was
a set of books whose spines and covers all looked remarkably similar. There was
no cover art, with the books differing only in the solid color used and of
course the titles. Not sure what they were about and maybe they were all by the
same author? I guess that makes my point. I wasn't interested enough to even stop
and look. (side note -- this book set aside, I DIG DEEP VELLUM BOOK STORE. Go
there.)
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri suggests in her
book, The Clothing of Books, that perhaps covers should be approached like school uniforms,
so that all books can be represented equally on the shelf. I haven't read her
book (which is about this very topic, and just 80 pages so I may), but in an
interview it seems she says this tongue in cheek . . . but hmmm. What if? What if there were
neat red covers for fiction, blue covers for non-fiction, and we readers had to
be sold on the title? Or the promotional blurb alone (for surely, the pitch
must be allowed in this scenario)? Can you imagine how much time it would take
to choose a book? As Sweet Brown said, "Ain't nobody got time for
that."
I have always said that I cannot imagine what it must be like to
not only have a story to tell, but to have the ability to write it down and the
bravery to release it into the world to be poked and prodded by strangers. I
hadn't really realized that covers can sometimes be just as personal to an
author as the stories held within them.
