Books You Shouldn't Judge By Their Covers!

hello everybody today i'm going to be talking about books you should still read despite their covers one of the most popular phrases in the english language is don't judge a book by its cover everybody knows that the outside the presentation the external can very often have nothing to do with or just be a very bad representation of the inside and the truth is i completely judge books by their covers and there's a reason for that because books have covers since they have covers it's impossible not to just you can't just override that part of your brain that is attracted to attractive things and that looks at like colors you like and art styles you like i am so fascinated by book cover design i think it is an incredible art and a such a challenging one like imagine your cover designer you're assigned a book you now have to read that book and think what is the one image for this book that is going to sum up the story have resonance with the title and is going to like bring people in because that's what it is it's like a it's a little thing that when you're at the bookstore and you're looking at a thousand different books what is the one that calls out to you which is the one that you you're kind of like intrigued by literally this morning i got an email from a bookshop i had ordered a book from and they were like um are you sure you want us to order that copy of the book because it's more expensive it's coming from abroad and it's going to take longer to get to you it's coming from the states they were like we have a cheaper one in stock right now you could come pick it up and i was like thank you i am attached to the cover it's actually in memory of memory this is the cover that i bought this is the cover that is widely available in canada you you agree with me i made the right decision here are some books i think you should read despite their unfortunate covers the first one is tiny beautiful things this has two covers a uk one and a u.s one and i think that they are both disappointing um this isn't the most egregious cover on this list but what are we talking about what are what are we trying to defend here they're not exciting they're not beautiful they don't like if you're in a book shop and you're looking at a table with 80 books on it or whatever how many books fit on a table yeah if you can get about eight books across and then maybe four rows say 42 books on a table i don't know you're looking at a bunch of books this is not the one you're gonna pick up first because if it wasn't by cheryl strait right like obviously the name power has fixes this a little bit but i think that this book would do so much better if it had an excellent cover this is a book by cheryl stray who wrote wild which has a great iconic cover and it is a compilation of letters from her project dear sugar deer sugar was a column she would write where people you know it's an agony ant people would write in with their problems being like dear sugar i am stuck in a loveless marriage dear sugar i don't know what to do with my life dear sugar i overheard my friends saying bad things about me what do i do what do i do what do i do and she responds and it is i need to reread it i need to reread it desperately soon because it is such it's one of those soul-giving books you read it you feel loved you feel okay you feel like humanity is all suffering we are all in this together she gives brutal advice sometimes like she's sort of like rip off the band-aid and keep going but she's always kind i it is phenomenal do not let this cover stop you the next two are two books that are really near and dear to my heart they are two why a books that i read when i was starting to get into y.a and these are two books that made me the reader that i am today they were books that like when i read them i was like whoa this isn't just a book this is like an amazing book this is art i want to be a writer i want to write like this and both of them have devastating covers and you know what's funny when i was a teenager the i would go to chapters here in canada i would go to the teen section and go to the sales books it was more important to me that i bought more books than i bought new books because i had such a small budget you know what i mean it would be like money i'd saved up and i'd be like okay i've got 20 i could buy three books from the bargain section today so i would go and often these old hardcover books would be there or just books that had bad covers and i think that's why they didn't sell well so they would end up in the sales section and i think that's how i found both of these so the first one is boy proof by cecil castellucci this is such a phenomenal book and if it helps in a vlogbrothers video like a decade ago john green also shouted out this book which was so exciting to me because it was one of my favorite books and no one ever talked about it and speaking of great wine all ceso casa lucci's book boy proof came out in 2005 and the haunting and beautiful story of this outcast girl named egg has stuck with me ever since so it has the john green stamp of approval but boy proof is the story of this girl who has changed her name to egg has shaved her head and her eyebrows and she draws her eyebrows on she makes herself look like this character that she loves and the fact that it's called boy proof makes you think like it's like a cheesy book about like a girl who doesn't want to be attractive to boys which would be a fine story but that's just not what this story is about and then um the cover makes you like what does that cover even say i don't even know what this is doing at all i have no clue what this is trying to do it's a book about a girl who's just figuring out what she wants to be how her ironically how her external presentation aligns up with how she feels on the inside it's a beautiful story it's so good it's a great contemporary ya it's also super short but it's got this devastating cover and every time i recommend it to people i know they're gonna look it up i know they're gonna see the cover and i wish i wish that they would like reprint this book with a new cover the next book is fly on the wall by e lockhart hey everyone it's ariel in editing oh my god i did not recognize the scale of the fly on the wall cover problem i read the one on the left i thought it was you know kind of bad it's pretty mediocre what it's so ah it's disappointing i knew there was this really strange superhero one what is that and then but then i didn't know about all of these what is happening it does this looks like five different books how could these all be covers of the same book e lockhart she's doing fine um so many of her books are very successful we were liars um frankie landau banks like a lot of her books doing great my favorite of her books is fly on the wall and nobody knows about this book and i think it's because of these covers so i got this cover again i'm pretty sure that this was like 4.99 and i didn't care if it was y a if it seemed like it was just gonna be a book about a teenager in high school and um it was cheap i would buy it back then and so i bought this book took it home read it obsessed read it again obsessed read it again like i remember reading this book same with boy proof um a lot of the like early when i was a teenager i would re-read books so often and like in really rapid succession but i have also read this book like a couple of times in the last few years so even as an adult i'm just like this is a great book it is so funny it is so interesting it's great why a it's a retelling of kafka's metamorphosis okay it's um obviously kafka's metamorphosis is about a guy who wakes up and realizes he's a disgusting is it a cockroach or is it just a different type of bug but he realizes he's a bug um which is like a metaphor for how he and his family see him well in this book you have a girl who is very interested in boys but she doesn't know what to do about all of that and she's bad at communicating and one day she just kind of offhand wishes she was the fly on the wall of the boys locker room and when she wakes up she is a fly and i love it it's irreverent it's silly it's funny it makes me laugh and i think it's really cute but these covers these covers the next one is representative of an entire category which is classics there are some classics that have some truly insanely iconically beautiful covers catcher in the rye the great gatsby i mean or even some books you know like i love the obey versions of 1984 and down and out in paris and london and animal farm and those are not the original covers but they're like become the more iconic covers so classics can have some gorgeous covers but sometimes oh my god yikes i guess it's not really classic yet i think it is arriving at that but the house of the spirits by isabel allende this is the cover that i have and you know it's got a few different covers and this is what i'm talking about when i say like it's not bad it's just boring it's like quite a boring cover the good news is that it's very beautiful book quality it's got good book feel very floppy but the covers are just really boring and so i think it's very misrepresentative of this book because it's it's a big book and there's a lot that goes on and it can be a little slow but it has so much plot there's so much fascinating stuff that happens in this book but i feel like it looks like such a boring book so when i recommend it to people i'm like you have to check out the house of the spirits it's set in chile it's about the revolution and it's about um three generations of family and you go through like knowing the first generation they have kids and then they die off and these kid people have kids and like you get to know this entire family tree and it's so fascinating and then they look it up and they find this and i can really see why that would be a turn off ariel and editing again i found this incredible cover that does not seem to be widely available because i was trying to find if i could literally buy it um i think that this makes so much more sense you have the cage you're like what does that represent why is there a flower in there why is there a bird flying away you've got this mysterious woman and a window open to another generation perhaps you have just the sense of magical realism and atmosphere atmosphere this one's way better the last one i wanted to mention that i've read is 10 arguments for deleting your social media right now by jaron lanier so i'm very fascinated in reading about the effects of social media and the effects of technology on our brains and on our culture and i'd heard of this book i looked it up and i thought this looks like one of those books that was written really quickly that is basically like a gift book like a listicle i i was like nah that's why is there a cat on the book why is there a cat there the font is like just times new roman or something it's so good one of the best books i read last year i am absolutely going to reread it this year if not every year for the rest of my life it's such a phenomenal book it's so good and it is just i guess ten arguments like it is literally just one two three four five like it just goes through i was about to count to ten and i was like you know what ten is but jaron lanier is so fascinating as an individual he has so many decades of experience working at silicon valley and actually knows what these companies can do with your data and etc etc and it's fascinating it's compelling it's interesting and it just looks so boring so please check that one out i wanted to end with two books that i need to overcome my cover aversion uh in order to read two books that i'm like really excited to read that i have purchased and i'm going to read them even though they have disappointing covers and i think i'm going to really like both of them the first one is a movable feast by ernest hemingway this is a book i had on my tbr for a really long time and it was a book that many years ago when i purchased i tried so hard to find an attractive edition of it and it does not exist there is an iconically beautiful cover that is absolutely gorgeous and it was the cover that the book was printed under when it originally came out but it's out of print in that edition they don't make they don't like they stopped making that a really long time ago so the only way you can get that is if you pay like thousands of dollars for a first edition hemingway which i'm committed to good covers but not that competitive these are like vignettes and essays and kind of memoir-y exploration of ernest hemingway's time in paris i think i'm really gonna enjoy it but this cover i think like book covers on its own is just a whole conversation i think that book covers in the last few years have really spiked in their beauty and i think it has everything to do with instagram and youtube and people showing books off we suddenly see like new books being published with like three different special editions and like sprayed edges and all of these things that in the past would have been super elite and rare but now because of like production stuff isn't as expensive to do but also like people know i think publishers know that if your book is pretty it will get featured on instagram before we go i have a word from our sponsor skillshare i have been working with skillshare for many years and i love having them as a sponsor because it's a brilliant resource it really is skillshare is an online learning community where millions come together to take the next step in their creative journey with thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people on topics including illustration design photography creative writing video and more i just bought a camera hold on i need to show you it i have a friend who is an absolutely amazing photographer his name is arya i am going to link his instagram down below you have to check him out he is incredible but i asked him if i i want to buy a camera what should i buy and he gave me a couple of like recommendeds for beginners and this one the pentax k1000 was one of them and i found it on facebook marketplace really cheap and with a second lens i don't know how to use that second lens but i have it and um i i met this old couple at the walmart and they were so nice literally um they brought a little photo album of photos they'd taken like 30 years ago at a wedding to show me that it takes good photos and i was like this is the sweetest moment but i bought this camera from them and i'm teaching myself photography and i love it skillshare has an incredible selection of photography courses i am currently watching this one outdoor photography shooting at sunset sunrise and night by chris burkhard um this is what i need because i especially have been enjoying like going for a little walk taking some photos and this course is done so beautifully and is helping me understand what is aperture because skillshare is curated specifically for learning there are no ads and they're always making and releasing premium new classes so no matter what your interests are or whatever things you are excited to learn about there's always new courses coming out the first thousand of my subscribers to use the link in the description will get a free trial of premium membership so you can explore your creativity thank you so much to everyone for clicking on that link and to skillshare for sponsoring this video i really hope that you guys enjoyed this please please please please please please down below let me know what is that one or two books that you have read that you know is amazing and you wish that the cover wasn't holding people back from reading it i would love to know thank you so much i will talk to you guys next time bye

Channel: Ariel Bissett

Views: 49,961

Rating: 4.9821525 out of 5

Keywords: arielbissett, ariel, bissett, books, book, book review, booktube, ariel bissett

Id: AVUsBZ9NPlo

Length: 17min 41sec (1061 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021