Showing posts with label beautiful. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beautiful. Show all posts

Wednesday, 22 December 2010

Five Challenge: Great Book Covers

Dear blog,
day two of the Persnickety Snark FIVE challenge, in which I blog about which five books of 2010 have (in my opinion) the most gorgeous book covers.
This was a hugely hard sort of post to write, because anyone who stalks my blog frequently knows how much I love book covers, however many times I buy books with nice covers and then they end up being totally awful.
Anyway.  So here are my five favourites, in no particular order.

THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE by Jandy Nelson
The UK cover is nice, but the US edition is even better.  (That is, the one I've pictured here).   I'm currently reading it-almost finished- and it seems so relevant to the book.
Anyway.  Much love for this cover.

HARMONIC FEEDBACK by Tara Kelly
So I haven't actually read this yet, but look at that cover.  That alone makes it worthy of my to-read shelf on goodreads.  However, I hear it's also about music, and that's a bonus.

 LOSING FAITH by Denise Jaden
Haven't read this either. Still,  I love simplistic book covers, and so the cover of Losing Faith is right up my street.  And it's pretty. 

FALLOUT by Ellen Hopkins
*drumroll* the grand conclusion to Ellen's gritty trilogy about Kristina Georgia Snow and her addiction to methamphetamine.  I love this cover because it's so relevant to the book; what you see is what you get.  A raw, disturbed and disturbing rollercoaster that follows the lives of three teenage siblings.

LIFE, AFTER by Sarah Darer Littman
Tree. Flowers.  Beautiful font.  Enough said.

Well, that's all.  It was irritatingly hard to pick my five favourites, so I'd better post this entry before I change my mind about some of them. 

Thursday, 8 April 2010

Covers=Beautiful

Dear Blog,
I don't know if anybody else does a post where they post their favourite book covers on a regular basis.  If they do, I'M SORRY and I do not mean to steal your idea.  But I am a relative newbie to the book blogosphere and I have yet to explore it all.
Either way. I thought once a month or so I'd post my favourite book covers, why I like them, reccomend the book, share them with the world or some such things.  And of course categorize them.  Cheesy covers, blue covers, spotty covers, covers with models, minimalist covers, etc. etc.  I thought I'd start with some truly beautiful/pretty/gorgeous covers. 
So.  Let it begin.  But first: Presume that all these mentioned are given their UK covers.  Because I live there, they're generally (and slightly obviously) the covers I get.

Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen-and anything else by Sarah Dessen.  I love her covers just because of, well, their sort of simplicity at a first look, but when you look closer, you see they're bursting with stuff that relates to the book.  And more often than not the books are just as wonderful.  Though the formula is sort of similar in all her books (girl+boy+life changing summer=pretty much anything by Miss Dessen (except Dreamland, in which case it's girl+boy+abusive relationship), it's good fun.  It's nice to read a romance novel without vampires and creepy things lurking round every corner (I'll rant about urban fantasy later).  This is the first of her books I read and I loved it.  I read it in about two days.
River Secrets by Shannon Hale- again I mean pretty much anything in the Books of Bayern series (anyone know how many books are going to come out?).   This is the one I'm reading right now (and I'll do a review of later), but also the only one I could get a good picture of.  But no image on a blog does this justice.  The Books of Bayern covers are undoubtedly my favourite covers of any book.  They're so wonderful you want to put off reading them and just keep them in pristine condition.  It's been over 2 years since I read Enna Burning. but for one of those aforementioned 2 years I was travelling Europe so I guess it didn't count.  Anyway. 
The Ghost's Child by Sonya Hartnett-They say you should never judge a book by it's cover.  Alas, despite my best intentions more often than not that's what I do.  But what are covers there for?  To pull us in and make us interested.  Exactly.  The publishers are just begging you to judge their book covers.  Well, this is the one book in today's list that you should not judge by its cover.  Despite the beautiful covers and illustrations inside, the story itself isn't good.  At all.  I suppose my main problem with it is the main character, Maddy.  She travels the world for the first five pages and then pines after Feather for the next 200 odd.
Cyrano by Geraline McCaughrean- is based on the famous French play.  I prefer to say "based on" than "adaptation" because more often than not adaptations are lame versions for kids, like a yummy freshly squeezed orange juice diluted with too much water.   I'm familiar with two covers for this, and both are equally wonderful.  This is one of them *points to shown cover*.  And the book is truly worthy of it.  Despite the short-ness, Cyrano  will make you laugh, cry, and reccomend it to everyone you know.  In that order. I've been meaning to read the play for a while, but in truth, it's one thing to read the script and another to see actors performing it in front of you.
   
The Declaration by Gemma Malley=a truly amazing dystopic novel.  The cover does it justice.  It has a certain stark beauty about it.  I would ramble for ages about it, but my little sister wants to use the computer now.  Alas.  I better go then.  All for now.