Page 2 | AIBU to think that these are the ugliest book covers ever?

elkiedee · 08/09/2021 23:51

And yes, i so agree with all the moans about non matching covers. And I will happily read kids' books but would always choose the covers aimed at kids.

My dad pointed out something else that bugs me a bit on a set of books I'd bought from TheBookPeople a few years, a very good value collection of 10 novels by Helen Dunmore. Only the publisher had put all the titles on the front covers and spines in the kind of fonts that they might use on chicklit, historical sagas etc. My father's a huge book snob and would find these fonts really offputting, but part of his comment is, I think, fairly clear - that he did know that Helen Dunmore was a fairly serious literary novelist and he thought this presentation of her work was a bit insulting. It's a bit sad if books by women are presented in a style that they think will make them seem - what? - more accessible, less threatening? to women. So many things publishers do that come across as treating us as stupid!

CiaoForNiao · 08/09/2021 23:55

I'm a bit weird with book covers. If I'm trying to buy a copy of something I've read before then it has to have the cover of the version I read. I bought a 2nd hand copy of a book I'd loved as a child recently online. The cover was "wrong" so it went to the charity shop.
And of course a series has to match.
I'm trying to complete my Enid Blyton collection and it's proving quite difficult to find some books in the right 'cover format' especially as the ones I collected in the 90s were printed in the 70s/80s and bought at car boot sales.

VanishingWitch · 09/09/2021 06:31

can't bear deckled edges. They give me the shivers. Me too. I hate them.

I don't have many pet peeves when it comes to books, that's one of them, and film/tv adaptation covers are another.

I also can't touch scruffy stained library books that often have a weird smell about them. Makes me wonder what's been done to them by previous readers.

AutistGoth · 09/09/2021 10:28

This book cover always used to upset me. My grandparents had to hide it behind other books when I visited.

AIBU to think that these are the ugliest book covers ever?

doorornottodoor · 09/09/2021 10:37

@AutistGoth oh god yes, I remember that. 🙈

JaninaDuszejko · 09/09/2021 14:59

@SpittinKitten

I see your Christies and raise you a Greer...

That's a classic cover. If you google it the modern copies have a version of that image as well.

I remember the Agatha Christie covers, I think they made the books seem more creepy than they actually are. And I love the disturbing Lord of the Flies cover because the book itself is disturbing.

Original poster

TowelMouse · 09/09/2021 19:56

EarringsandLipstick My sympathies to you. I'd still be in therapy if I had to try to go to sleep with those covers staring at me.

The Female Eunuch cover gives me the creeps too and the Lord of The Flies cover is nightmarish but I can at least understand the logic there. I don't see much in the Christie covers.

OP posts:

Original poster

TowelMouse · 09/09/2021 20:06

I'm not sure how to explain it but I hate 'floppy' book covers. I want them quite, um, firm 🙈 but also I don't like when the spine is too thick & you can't properly fold back pages.

I know exactly what you mean. Adult books shouldn't be floppy. It just feels wrong.

OP posts:

Matildatoldsuchdreadfullies · 09/09/2021 20:09

My son had a school copy of 1984 that had the most atrocious cover ever. Unfortunately, I’m beginning to think I imagined it, as image searching is proving fruitless.

AutistGoth · 09/09/2021 21:59

@Matildatoldsuchdreadfullies
Can you describe the Nineteen-Eighty-Four book cover at all? We might be able to find it. MN is good for that. Incidentally, the book your username comes from still traumatises me to this very day!

As for the legendary torso of the Female Eunuch, I actually like it! I'm less keen of the cover of the sequel: the Whole Woman, though the book itself is a good read.

As for the Goulding book cover, it upset me because I was a young child at the time I saw it. It doesn't bother me so much now.

Jux · 09/09/2021 22:53

@EarringsandLipstick

I'm not sure how to explain it but I hate 'floppy' book covers. I want them quite, um, firm 🙈 but also I don't like when the spine is too thick & you can't properly fold back pages.

There seems to be a trend doing that to the spines at the moment. So thick you can't open the book, what a great idea. I'd a million times rather have broken spines and pages shifting and the whole thing help together by a rubber band, than a bunch of pristine looking books on a shelf which no one's been able to read comfortably.

What a book looks like in the end is not important, it's what it conrains that matters. What's wrong with a book looking well-loved? It probably means it's really good!

SanFranBear · 09/09/2021 23:01

Fucking hell, OP - they are nightmare fuel! I was lucky enough to be given Agatha Christies whole collection with the original book covers... panicking now about what the last few are going to look like!

Realyorkshiretea · 09/09/2021 23:06

That second cover 🤣🤣🤣🤣

I’m sat next to sleepy DD’s bed and trying not to wake her up by pissing myself laughing

AtomHeartMotherOfGod · 09/09/2021 23:25

@Realyorkshiretea me too! It looks like a comedy inbreed or something.

These are my three most disturbing, but they don't meet the proper criterium of 'ugly'. The Poe bug-eyed blood skeleton comes closest, although the shark's Beaker mouth doesn't help it's image much.

AtomHeartMotherOfGod · 09/09/2021 23:28

Dang it... something weird happened. These are the books!

RowanAlong · 09/09/2021 23:43

No these are great! Classic (70s?) macabre surrealist vibe, suited to murder mystery novels! Very creative book design and meant to be innovative at the time.

doorornottodoor · 09/09/2021 23:54

The Fontana Agatha Christie covers are very surreal. Annoyingly some give some of the plots away. These ones from my childhood are particularly brilliantly macabre

SpideySenseTingles · 09/09/2021 23:58

I hate the book covers on my set of the Chronicles of Narnia. Think they are early 2000s and some designer had just discovered photoshop. I really want to replace them with a more whimsical set but it seems really wasteful.

JaneJeffer · 10/09/2021 11:22

I love the Jaws cover!

elkiedee · 10/09/2021 11:50

@CiaoforNiao I still buy kids' books for myself (I have given quite a few of them to DS1 when he actually read books, between about 7 and 12), mostly secondhand, and I do prefer copies that are the same as the ones I had, though for some books I just keep both. I've also given my sister some spare Noel Streatfeild duplicates. On Streatfeild there's an additional problem that even here a number of books have been given titles that suggest they are part of a non existent series - Party Frock is Party Shoes, Curtain Up is Theatre Shoes. I think some of the covers are quite nice but ooh those titles.

TheDistortion · 10/09/2021 11:58

@SpideySenseTingles

I hate the book covers on my set of the Chronicles of Narnia. Think they are early 2000s and some designer had just discovered photoshop. I really want to replace them with a more whimsical set but it seems really wasteful.

Wow, that took some examining on my part to work out it was supposed to be the Wood between the Worlds - it actually looks more like Lev Grossman's vision of it in The Magicians. With the rings/ armbands it is like a cross between the Lord of the Rings and something sci fi, maybe The Tripods! If I had to guess what kind of book it was, I would say that is a clone being created in some kind of futuristic space city.

SageRosemary · 10/09/2021 12:02

Pre-Covid, my a substantial portion of my reading time was in a cafe a couple of days a week whilst DC were at after-school activities. I always used a fabric book cover that I picked up on holidays. Always wondered if people made assumptions about what I was reading. The fabric cover felt lovely. I'd have to take the fabric cover off if anyone asked me what I was reading, it was hard enough to keep track of the characters without being expected to remember the name of the book and the author too. Never used it at home, but I'd have a different book on the go for home.

OP, you are so right about covers. I'd had it at the back of my mind to look out for some Agatha Christie for teen DC - but I couldn't bring myself to buy those editions!

CiaoForNiao · 10/09/2021 13:14

[quote elkiedee]@CiaoforNiao I still buy kids' books for myself (I have given quite a few of them to DS1 when he actually read books, between about 7 and 12), mostly secondhand, and I do prefer copies that are the same as the ones I had, though for some books I just keep both. I've also given my sister some spare Noel Streatfeild duplicates. On Streatfeild there's an additional problem that even here a number of books have been given titles that suggest they are part of a non existent series - Party Frock is Party Shoes, Curtain Up is Theatre Shoes. I think some of the covers are quite nice but ooh those titles.[/quote]
Don't get me started on the renaming of NSs books! I thought I'd found a load on kindle that I'd never heard of. Only to realise they were the ones I own, just renamed as the "Shoes" series ffs. Still at least I didn't actually buy them!

elkiedee · 10/09/2021 16:24

There are some Kindle reissues of novels actually written by NS for adults, not children, as well as one in paperback (and a Kindle edition but more expensive I think) by Persephone. I've read Saplings and The Whicharts and would recommend them, with a caution that reading The Whicharts might affect your enjoyment of Ballet Shoes, as it's a rather jaded and cynical novel, but really interesting for readers like me for its perspective on some women's lives nearly 100 years ago (the 1920s or 1930s, I think).

CiaoForNiao · 10/09/2021 16:28

Ballet Shoes is my all time favourite book ever. I read my original copy so much it fell apart. And I can't find a copy with the same cover now, at least I don't think I can. I can't remember what the cover looked like
I do now own a beautiful hardback copy instead though.
I'd be interested, if wary, of reading those books mentioned @elkiedee .