Go Ahead, Judge a Book By Its Cover!

“Never judge a book by its cover”—it was pretty standard advice when I was growing up (although interestingly enough when I asked my two oldest children if they’d ever heard the phrase they hadn’t!).

I have a clear memory of a school librarian presenting this adage and explaining its significance as I sat on the carpet of the children’s section of the library one day when I was in kindergarten.

These words have also—of course—been repeated many times as a metaphor for getting to know people before you decide what they will be like.

While I whole-heartedly accept the metaphorical application of this phrase, I have finally decided that the literal meaning is hardly ever true.

For example, I just finished reading two amazingly good books (The Secret Keeper and The Light Between Oceans) and one pretty good one (The Life of Pi). Both of the five-star books had very appealing covers, and the fairly good one had a somewhat interesting cover. I also noticed that the book I thought was only pretty good got a lot more interesting when the story started tying in with the picture of a tiger on the front.

I realized last night as I closed The Light Between Oceans (a book that I read in only five days because I could hardly put it down) that the cover was partly what had led me to read the story. 

Then I started thinking about how I discovered another author I really like, Kate Morton, by looking at book covers: one day I was quickly trying to decide on a book from the “recommended” shelf at the library, and one of them stood out because of the picture on its front. This was The Distant Hours. After that I read Morton’s two other books, and finally, a few weeks ago, her latest addition, The Secret Keeper--all with similar covers, incidentally.

And then there was that awful book I pre-ordered a few months ago—as it turns out, I didn’t care for the book or the cover, really.

I started to think that maybe one really can judge a book by its cover, at least these days.

Maybe book-makers are getting better at choosing cover art—or maybe illustrators are getting better at reflecting the content of books. Maybe publishers are realizing the importance of picking a cover that attracts the book's intended audience, or maybe over the years I’ve just developed a better feel for what I’ll enjoy reading.

Whatever it is, I think a cover can actually tell us a lot about a book (although I'm pretty sure I would never REFUSE to read a book just because I didn't like the cover!).

Anyway, I just thought I’d put it out there—maybe it’s a good idea to judge a book by its cover once in a while . . . as long as it really is just a book :)