This week's topic: What are your all-time favorite book covers?
As a teen, if a book cover had a horse on it, I was almost guaranteed to pick it up. This meant I read a lot of bad romance novels with artwork done by folks who were savvy to the horse factor in book-buying decisions.
Have you ever noticed just how many historical romances from the 80s have horses on them? It's a formula of cleavage (her decollatage and his pecs), tight breeches, and wildly blowing long hair (and it seems that wind-blown-hair look also appears in YA book covers.), with a horse thrown in somewhere. If not horses, unicorns would do in a pinch, and they more often appeared in SF/Fantasy.
But over time my taste in cover artwork has changed, influenced by my own experiences with painting, sketching, graphic design, and photography. I find that I like covers that are simplistic and graphic-looking
or photographic with a twist
and lush and artistic (still love some of the girls in period dresses but they are becoming overdone and it's harder to make yours stand out)
I'm not much into abstract covers. What about you--what covers have caught your eye?
8 comments:
I love the A Dirty Job cover! I hadn't seen that before, but it's simple, clean and funny. Win!
I'm also a fan of The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate and Born Wicked covers. They're both so different and yet eye-catching.
Born Wicked and The Space Between are both gorgeous covers. The Gail Carriger books always catch my eye too because there's something a little odd about them. Good list!
Also, can I just say I love your blog title and the explanation for it ("because Sarcastic Muse sounded too snarky"). Hilarious!
Wow that A Dirty Job cover certainly makes you look twice.
Oh wow - The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate is exactly the kind of cover I love and talked about in my post, but I don't think I've ever heard of it before. Great choices!
Of the ones you've listed, I would be drawn to Born Wicked and Shattered Souls.
In general, I've never really thought about the style of a book cover. My favorite authors though, generally have dark covers with little other artwork than shadows or flowers. Can you tell I'm a VC Andrews and Tess Gerritsen fan? LOL
A Dirty Job! Such a good book. Also really love The Space Between cover. Very intricate. Nice choices!
Thanks for commenting, everyone! A Dirty Job's cover definitely makes you do a double-take. And if you haven't read it (it's not YA, but his parallel novel Bite Me comes close), A Dirty Job is a hilarious book. All of Christopher Moore's books are, really.
And thank you, Jaime, for the compliment on my blog title. I think most of the people who know me would say that sarcastic muse is still more applicable!
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