The Importance of an Interesting Exterior

 

 

     What draws you to a book? What makes you interested to read it? For some people it might just be good reviews or maybe they already saw the movie and want to read the book. I know that for me, it's the cover and the summary on the back. If I'm in a book store, a library or even browsing on Good Reads, and I see a book with an attention grabbing picture on the front, I begin to wonder what story lies within it. Nobody looks at a book with a solid or plain outside and says, "Wow! This book looks fantastic!" Sure, you might pick it up and flip through it just to see what it's about, but it doesn't capture your attention as much. The picture on the front of a book can reveal a lot and make you predict what the book's about. You are then forced to test your predictions and actually read the book.

 

Here are some perfect examples of intriguing book covers:

 

 

 

     These capture your attention don't they? They make you want to know what the story is about. That's when the second thing that draws me to a book comes into play; the summary. After I find an interesting cover, I flip over the book and read the back. If it doesn't interest me, then most likely I won't read the book. The summary on the back cover has to give just enough information about the story so that you're left with unanswered questions. It has to highlight the key points in the plot with out revealing the ending.

Here are a few quotes from the summaries of the books shown above:

Monster by Walter Dean Myers- "The film will be the story of my life. No, not my life, but of this experience. I'll call it what the lady prosecutor called me ... Monster."

Feed by Mira Grant- "We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop."

Unwind by Neal Shusterman- "Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, parents can have their child "unwound," whereby all of the child's organs are transplanted into different donors, so life doesn't technically end."

You thought these books looked interesting when you only saw the cover! Now that you have read a bit about the book what do you think? You can see my point about how important the exterior of a book can be. They say not to judge a book by it's cover, but in this case how can you not?