Christy Ku argues that the cover and title of a book is one of the most important elements to take into account when choosing what to read. Do you agree?
Does this cover make you want to find out what’s written inside?
Several years ago, Borders was liquidising its stock as it went bust. Naturally, I went bargain hunting/scavenging through the boxes and chose a book purely because of its beautiful cover and intriguing title. To this day, I Capture the Castle still stands as one of my all-time favourites.
As a result, I firmly believe that judging a book by its cover is a wonderful way to choose books. When you’re faced with overflowing bookshelves (physical or virtual), the book cover and title will be the first things that attracts your attention, making you pick it up and flick through the first few pages. Just listen to these book titles; Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, When God Was a Rabbit, Life of Pi, A Clockwork Orange – they’re utterly bizarre, intriguing or just hard to forget.
There’s no denying the importance of book covers. We all know that first impressions matter – when we meet someone for the first time, we will make so many assumptions about them in a few seconds. It’s the same for books – the publishers dress the book in its Sunday Best and send it off into the big wide world...
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