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

Good Show Sir 

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.

Judge a Book by it's Cover 

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.

Pop Sensation 

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.

When Lurid Was Beautiful

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

Cover Junkie 

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.

Vintage Irish Book Covers

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.

Booking Through Thursday

Trailer-Camp Girl, originally uploaded by Biff Bang Pow.

I never read Trailer Camp Girl but I totally would read it if I had it in front of me.

Here is a new meme I am going to try out. Every Thursday a new book related question is asked on Booking Through Thursday and people answer it.

Sometimes it's nice to have something to get me started writing. Ok, it's always nice.

This weeks question:

Have your book-tastes changed over the years? More fiction? Less? Books that are darker and more serious? Lighter and more frivolous? Challenging? Easy? How-to books over novels? Mysteries over Romance?

Well, yes and no. I still like to read somewhat odd books, especially old books from the turn of the century, from the 50s, textbooks, self help books that solve problems I don't have, YA novels as an adult. Things that cause people to say "Why the hell are you reading that?"

The main difference is that I used to read a lot of mysteries, mostly series mysteries with amateur women detectives. I would get these by the bagful, as my grandmother and aunt would read them and hand them down to me. But after a while the suspension of disbelief got to be too much. That's when I started reading SciFi/Fantasy. Because I figured it was easier to believe that people were riding around on dragons than it was to believe that say, a woman running a catering company in a small town had solved 11 vicious murders where she was smarter than the police.