Visited a library book sale and realized I've been judging books by their covers this whole time

After grabbing a $1 paperback with a terrible 80s cover art that turned out to be one of the best novels I've read this year, I'm questioning every time I passed over something based on the jacket design in book club picks.

2 comments

2 Comments

nathanking10d ago

And it's honestly the same thing with pretty much anything people judge too fast, like movies based on ratings or even people based on how they dress. I remember skipping a documentary for years because the poster looked super boring and it turned out to be one of the most interesting things I watched that year. We do it with restaurants too, walk right past a place with a faded sign and never stop in, then find out later it's been serving the best food in town for twenty years. Makes you wonder how much stuff we're missing because we let first impressions make the choice for us.

bailey.sandra13d ago

Ugh the "terrible 80s cover art" thing is so real. I literally passed on a book for three years because it looked like a cheesy romance novel from a thrift store, finally grabbed it on a whim and it became my favorite that year. Now I make myself flip to the first page of any book with a bad cover before I put it back. The cover is just the publisher's bad guess at what might sell, not the author's writing.