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I’ll be honest — I am a big proponent of reading books based on their covers. Of course, I don’t think that only good books have good covers or anything, since some great books have some real stinky covers, but book covers are a vital part of a book’s presentation. We know this because of how much care and money go into them. They can either be the thing that makes a book stand out amongst a sea of competitors or the thing that draws a parallel between a book and books like it. Sometimes, it’s both.
The book cover can’t be overstated as a key piece of book marketing, in other words. With that said, I think we give it its due. Several times throughout the year, I see fun roundups dedicated to exploring the best (or worst, if you want to get funky) book covers of the year. But book covers don’t exist in a vacuum, and, as someone who looks at many, varied lists of books each year, they’re not always what I see when I first hear of a book. What I do always see, though, is the title.
Really, the book title and cover work together to market books, but titles can also grab you by themselves. This is what happened with me and all the books listed below. Whether they made me skeeved out, feel inspired, or gave me questions, each of the book titles below intrigued me and had me wanting to learn more about the contents of the book. And, I suspect they’ll have a similar effect on you.
The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim
When I first saw this title, before having seen the cover, I did a Jennifer Lawrence. It grabbed me because I thought “surely that’s not…”But yes, yes it is. Though I was a little in denial at first, with the cover, it’s impossible to ignore what the title means. All together, the title and cover make a great icky (and sticky? Ew) combination, which is perfect for a horror novel.
We Alive, Beloved: Poems by Frederick Joseph
Reading this title felt like having an auntie or some other elder take my hands in reassurance. And, given, how it’s about showing the beauty of being Black, even through struggle, I think that is exactly what it is.
The Color of a Lie by Kim Johnson
This one grabs because lies aren’t really something I think of as having color. Then I read the blurb and see how it’s about a white-passing family in 1955 who move to an all-white neighborhood, and realize that yes, some lies do in fact have color.
Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil by Ananda Lima
What do you think when you first see this one? I waffled between thinking it was to be taken literally, and thinking it was a metaphor for maybe a bad time in the author’s life. Turns out literal was the way to go — the first line of the blurb reads “At a Halloween party in 1999, a writer slept with the devil.” Welp.
Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi
“Little rot” sounds like something that, in the right writer’s hands (which, it’s Emezi, so obviously) could be a really gripping exploration of darkness that starts out small and spreads.
