I’ve started work on the 2024 List of Lists and in doing so, I came across a list by Print Mag – the 2024 100 Best Book Covers.
Don’t judge, but I totally judge a book by its cover! After all, the cover is a book’s ‘elevator pitch’, right?
If Print Mag’s goal was to add to my TBR, then it’s achievement unlocked – I’ll be checking out:
- How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone by Cameron Russell
- My Men by Victoria Kielland
- Gretel and the Great War by Adam Ehrlich Sachs
- Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly
- Dear Dickhead by Virginie Despentes
- Ask Me Again by Clare Sestanovich
- Birding by Rose Ruane
- The Manicurist’s Daughter: A Memoir by Susan Lieu
- The New Life by Tom Crewe
- Perfume and Pain by Anna Dorn
- May Our Joy Endure by Kevin Lambert
- Naples 1925 by Martin Mittelmeier
- The Observable Universe by Heather McCalden
- Scrap by Calla Henkel
My personal favourites for the year – All Fours, Clear, Thunderhead, Whale Fall – are you sensing a theme…? Also I bought The Divorcees and Scaffolding based entirely on their covers. And that sheep on The Alternatives.
I love a good mooch around a bookshop looking at covers and picking up those that appeal so I definitely judge covers too!
Covers are so important! My two favourites areScaffolding – those swans are intriguing – and The Divorcees which is so seductive.
When I bought Scaffolding the person at the bookshop quizzed me about why I had picked it. When I said that I knew nothing about it but chose it for the cover, she laughed and said that I was about the fifth customer who had said that!
Covers are incredibly important, my favourite of yours is Clear!
I could have Clear hanging on the wall, I love it so much!
I’ve never thought of doing this activity. This was fun. Thanks.
I love the Birding cover, too, but haven’t managed to get hold of the book. I’d not seen that edition of The New Life, but it’s perfect. My question would be: how often is there an inverse relationship — an attractive cover (and maybe a great title, too), but a disappointing story?
There have been a few books I’ve read where the cover was great but the story lacking – most recently, Evenings and Weekends by Oisín McKenna – I was seduced in the bookshop but the story really didn’t cut it.
Sounds like it’s selling well, then. The ideal for me is an attractive cover that in some way reflects what’s in the book. It still surprises me that this isn’t the norm!