Saturday, September 10, 2011

Blogs That Cover the Covers - One Half Dozen Great Book Cover Blogs

As you could expect from a visual artist who loves to read, I've always been into book covers.

That's one of the things about eBooks that is kind of a down side - the cover is just this little bitty thumbnail.

That's ok, I can get my fix from a fine selection of book cover blogs.  What a subgenre!

These blogs mostly feature vintage books with comments on the cover and writing about the cover art.  There are other book cover blogs discussing the process of designing book covers which I will cover at a later date.  For now, bring on the (mostly) funny.

In random order

Distracted by floating price tag
This blog features the best of the worst of Science Fiction and Fantasy novels.  Since Sci-Fi Fantasy has some of the weirdest covers, this is a highly amusing blog.  I like the way many of the entries are written as if they are instructions from the art director.  I really have to wonder who thought up some of the stuff on these covers.  Anyone can submit a photo, and the rule is they must be taken "in the wild" with a digital camera.  Most of them look like they were taken in a used book store.  No series or parody books are accepted.

Pigs?

This is a funny blog.  I liked how it had books from various time periods and genres, instead of limiting itself to one theme. Anything mockable is fair game.  It featured Mammary Monday and Phallic Friday so that gives you an idea of the type of posts.  Sadly it has not been updated in a while.



This blog features my favorite type of cover - vintage pulp fiction.  Has a good balance of mocking and serious commentary about the book art.  Frequently updated.


More vintage pulp book covers, because I can never get enough.  Good commentary.


I actually had this Space Cat book as a child and I loved it.  The original didn't say anything about the mushrooms but now it all makes sense.  This blog has a good variety of books of different genres and time periods, with a big dose of snark.  Most of the books are not altered.


Now for something completely different.  This is a serious blog of artistic book covers from the 20s to the 70s, in a stark graphic style with limited colors.  These were published with much lower budgets than most of the other books on the blogs I've linked to.  They don't have all the fancy colors and printing and rely on artistic talent.  Very inspirational.

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