5 Good Things: Books I’m Buying Because of the Cover
Sometimes you can and will judge a book by its cover. I believe that book art has always mattered to a degree of what will catch eyes in a store window or the new releases table. What kind of art will people gravitate to that makes them pick up the book and purchase it. The cover is as important, because as much as we allow ourselves to explain how it doesn’t matter, especially if you’re devoted to its author, the cover art almost tells you whether or not you’re going to like the story.
Good design is storytelling. Art is emotional, which is then also storytelling. When a book’s cover art draws you in, there are clues to let you know something about the plot line, the main character(s) or the overall mood of the book. I judge by the book cover and have even gone out of my way to purchase online the foreign cover version if it speaks to me more than the U.S. cover. That’s just me, I’m a fan of good, creative design, it helps with the storytelling.
*Since I have yet to read these, the story descriptions are taken from the book’s product page.
GO GENTLE by Maria Semple
Adora Hazzard’s journey of self-discovery as a philosopher and divorcee living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Romantic, hilarious, intelligent, and bursting with the stuff of life, Go Gentle is a thrilling story of one woman’s mid-life transformation, cementing Maria Semple in the pantheon of our most exciting and important contemporary writers.
200 MONAS by Jan Saenz
“This book was a trip. Try to keep up with main character Arvy as she desperately tries to find a way to sell 200 pills she discovered in her recently deceased mother’s closet. The story is fast paced, raunchy, and sprinkled with notes of humanity.” —Kyra Tatlow, Book Love, Plymouth, MA
EVERY HAPPINESS by Reena Shah
Every Happiness is a dazzling debut that explores the ties that bind two women across decades and continents despite rivalry, class difference, and the conflicting needs of family and self.
Deepa and Ruchi are 12 years old when they meet at their Catholic school in India, but their connection is swift and lasting. As the two girls grow up and face their families' expectations and the limits of their ambitions, their friendship is marked by intimacy, jealousy, and suppressed desire.
AN APPRENTICESHIP or THE BOOK OF PLEASURES by Clarice Lispector
Lóri, a primary school teacher, is isolated and nervous, comfortable with children but unable to connect to adults. When she meets Ulisses, a professor of philosophy, an opportunity opens: a chance to escape the shipwreck of introspection and embrace the love, including the sexual love, of a man. Her attempt, as Sheila Heti writes in her afterword, is not only “to love and to be loved,” but also “to be worthy of life itself.”
HEAP UPON EARTH by Chloe Michelle Howarth
Set in 1960s Ireland, the second novel from the author of the bestselling Sunburn is a poignant and beautiful meditation on life lived under the weight of secrets, as three orphaned siblings arrive in a village longing for a fresh start.
