Mistletoe Monday
There’s been a lot of press about awful covers (my favorite cover horror story is Christina Dodd’s three-armed woman), but what about good ones? For today’s Mistletoe Monday question:
What’s your absolute favorite book cover?
One person will be chosen at random to receive a Mistletoe magnet calendar.
Oh oh oh this is such a hard question. If pressed though I’d have to say Patricia A. Mckillip’s book “Winter Rose” it’s just..so so beautiful *dreamy sigh* I love the artist for her books (Kinuko Craft) and even though I’ve switched to mostly e-books, hers I just cannot cannot give up.
I’m rather fond of the cover for The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber. It features the colors crimson and white via a dissheveled and tossed upon bed (the white) with crimson bed curtains in a suggestive, slightly naughty way. And no people so let loose your imagination!
The old, hardcover cover of The Westing Game.
Mostly because I’ve had this book since I was 8, and I think the imagery is clever.
http://elizabethwillse.com/2008/10/07/the-westing-game-for-the-nth-time/
Ooo that’s like picking a favorite book! (Actually, I’m such a visual person, I can’t read certain editions of books because I find the covers distracting… its my OCD)
Recently I like the Girl vs. Evil series covers by Rosemary Clement-Moore
Possibly the one dearest to my heart is the original hardback cover to Monkeewrench by P.J. Tracy. The monkey is so cute, but its a murder mystery book with humor tossed in. The cover matches it so well!
I love the Queen’s fool, by Phillipa Gregory.
Besides your fine-art covers, I do like all of Jen Lancaster’s covers, especially Pretty in Plaid. I’m sure there are others I particularly like, but I’m 3 hours away from my books right now…
I will have to say the original cover of Julie Garwood’s The Bride. It is the first book I ever purchased simply because I loved the cover and it became one of my favorite books of all time. I am not sure how often I have read it, but I think the words are falling off the pages.
You can see the cover here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/11418664-the-bride
I love the cover for The Spellman Files and the subsequent sequels by Lisa Lutz. I think they fit the books perfectly and they are still interesting looking.
see here:http://www.amazon.com/Spellman-Files-Novel-Lisa-Lutz/dp/1416532390
It would have to be the Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. It’s about the sister to King Henry’s point of view when her sister was queen. It’s a portrait and the woman in it is looking over her shoulder because of all the secrets she knows and not wanting to get caught because of them.
I do love all the fine art covers for you Lauren. I think my favorite is the Emerald Ring and Mistletoe. But I also love the book covers for Philippa Gregory’s books, especially The Other Boleyn Girl. Growing up I loved the covers (and still do) for the Little House books.
The Spellman covers are great.
I think my favorite is Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me with the shoes. The shoes are great, and it actually has something to do with the book! (IMO, the new cover with the dice is about the dumbest cover ever. The book has nothing to do with dice)
My favorite cover art of yours is found on the hardcover books: “Pink Carnation” which led me to start the series, “Crimson Rose”, “Night Jasmine” and “Mistletoe”. I also like “Birth of Venus” by Susan Dunant, all of the covers on the Jeanne Kalogridis novels, many of the Philippa Gregory covers including her upcoming book “Lady of the Rivers”, and my hardcover dust cover of Gone With The Wind. I also enjoy buying fine bound editions of my favorite books when I find a vintage one or a new one that is nicely done and not too busy and tacky. My favorites of these are Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.
My absolute favourite would be my old hand me down copy of Gentian Hill
by Elizabeth Goudge – http://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/6482101-gentian-hill.
I love the hand drawn feel, the colours, movement. Also this image fits the characters perfectly and is exactly how I picture them – which are rare.
I also love – Night Jasmine and the The First Princess of Wales: A Novel
by Karen Harper – http://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/389525.The_First_Princess_of_Wales
Love to see the faces – makes you want to pick up the book and find out what they are feeling or what secrets they are hiding.
My new favorite cover…The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin. It comes out tomorrow and is also a great novel!
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9999107-the-american-heiress
Check it out!
I love the covers on Juliet Marillier’s Wildewood Dancing book
http://www.julietmarillier.com/books/wildwooddancing.html
I really like the cover of The Time Traveler’s Wife and more recently, Julie Anne Long’s, What I Did For A Duke…that cover is so effervescent!
Housewrights by Art Corriveau. I work at a library and when I came across this cover I fell in love with it and then read the book and fell in love with that!!! I needed one for my bookshelf but could not find a bookstore in VT that had the cover I wanted (there are two different covers and I ended up having to drive to New Hampshire to get the book with the right cover!!
http://www.amazon.com/Housewrights-Art-Corriveau/dp/0142002097/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308607186&sr=8-1
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle:)
Robin McKinley’s last couple of covers have been gorgeous.
Chalice:
http://goo.gl/czPmH
Pegasus:
http://goo.gl/mK9hF
I do miss your fine art covers, but I’m not going to pitch a fit about it 🙂 I’m glad the overall style with the parchment under the title and and such still match, at least. I’m a bit OCD about my books matching!
Amanda, I totally agree with The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle! That is a great cover.
My current favorite is on the book An Airman’s Wife by Aimee McHardy. It’s a compilation of all the letters Aimee’s husband wrote to her while he was serving in WW1. The bottom half of the cover has a WW1 Airplane, instead of a sky there are faded out letters, and in the top corner is a portrait of a WW1 couple. It’s a beautiful cover.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Airmans-Wife-Story-Lovers-Separated/dp/1904010962/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308609307&sr=8-1
My favorite covers include:
the one that was on my copy of Little Women:
http://www.amazon.com/Little-Puffin-Classics-Louisa-Alcott/dp/0140380221#reader_0140380221
I like a lot of the Montgomery covers. I went with one that seemed to sum them all up.
http://www.freebase.com/view/en/anne_of_the_island
I also like Winnie the pooh covers.
finally I read a lot of Heyer in the last two years. I love the source books cover for the Grand Sophy.
http://www.sourcebooks.com/store/grand-sophy.html
Best part of the cover is Sophy’s dog Tina.
I also some of the other source book covers including Arabella, Beauvallet, False Colors, and Why Shoot A Butler?
My absolute favorite is LW cover with the cute dog in a very close second.
The Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
At the moment, my favorite is I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett, but it changes almost every day.
I’d say it’s the cover to “The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles” that I received as a going away gift in 1st grade. 🙂
http://www.perma-bound.com/ViewDetail/174014-last-of-the-really-great-whangdoodles
Great question, and tough to answer!
I love the cover of my paperback copy of Zemindar with a beautiful painting of the setting by M. Ginsburg.
http://www.ginsburgillustration.com/romance/romance_9.html
The Pink Carnation is my favorite..love the fine are covers and the art work of Harry Potter is a close second.
This is really hard. I really like your covers my favorite was actually Mischief in the Mistletoe bc i love Christmas time. I also like the Ancestors of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley where the priestess is looking over a rocky cliff surrounded by crashing waves.
Ooh, the Harry Potters do have good artwork. I LOVE the Emerald Ring cover. That’s how I discovered this series. I can’t remember anything else. I just put my kids to bed and can barely remember my first name.
Love looking at everyone’s picks.
Dark Road to Darjeeling. The image is a bit odd, but I love the colors: they just sing to me.
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Road-Darjeeling-Lady-Julia/dp/0778328201/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308617000&sr=8-1
I second the vote for Patricia McKillip. Her covers are breathtaking. Od Magic:
http://www.amazon.com/Od-Magic-Patricia-McKillip/dp/B000NO1CQO/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I2OMFORVGGXZRC&colid=CUNIZ0ONPZXW#_
Joan Vinge’s The Snow Queen and The Summer Queen.
Sci-fi, fantasy, YA, children’s books—they all have the best cover art, IMO.
On the flip side, this is one of the worst covers ever. Seriously. Gives me the willies. At least it’s not a clown.
http://www.amazon.com/Dollmaker-Amanda-Stevens/dp/0778324281/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308623265&sr=8-1
Easy…Mischief of the Mistletoe. When I picked up the book I swear it sparkled. The clerk mentioned how gorgeous it was, as did the check out girl.
I love the German covers for the translation of Beyond the Western Sea. http://www.amazon.de/Jenseits-gro%C3%9Fen-Meeres-01-Flucht/dp/3473581534/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1308625667&sr=1-1 and http://www.amazon.de/Jenseits-gro%C3%9Fen-Meeres-blinde-Passagier/dp/3473581690/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1308625667&sr=1-2
Oh this is hard! I love the fine-art covers on my Georgette Heyer novels, almost as much as I love the fine-art Carnation covers.
http://images.amazon.com/images/G/01/richmedia/images/cover.gif
There is a good series written by an Australian author called the Laws of Magic series, which had some really nice covers – dark like old leather, gold-edged with a single coloured symbol in the middle (which related to the title of that particular book). I was annoyed when they changed the covers for book 5 of the series, to a brightly covered teen-fantasy style. The old covers were much classier.
(Compare this cover http://www.girl.com.au/img/wordofhonour.jpg to this cover, http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/516bWF-Q0XL._SL500_AA266_PIkin3,BottomRight,- for book 3 in the series)
Finally, I enjoyed the cover for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, for all the hidden symbols and information it had.
Ok the links in the above post stuffed up – try http://www.amazon.com/Arabella-ebook/dp/B004NBZFRU/ref=sr_1_5?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1308625912&sr=1-5 and this http://www.amazon.com/Laws-Magic-Word-Honour-ebook/dp/B004T6E4TO/ref=pd_sim_kinc_2?ie=UTF8&m=A24IB90LPZJ0BS instead
I have just finished Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare. The cover is (blush) the reason I bought the book. Thankfully, I am redeemed in that it is a good read.
http://www.amazon.com/Clockwork-Angel-Infernal-Devices-Book/dp/1416975861/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1308657690&sr=1-1
I adore the original covers to the first two of the Lady Julia Grey series by Deanna Raybourn.
http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Sanctuary-Lady-Julia-Mystery/dp/0778324923/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1308657724&sr=1-5
The Westing Game was such a good book! My cover was different than Elizabeth’s.
The original hard cover of “The Girl Who Chased the Moon” by Sarah Addison Allen. I bought the book originally for the cover and of course, loved the book, but the cover could be framed as a lovely print too.
It’s so hard to narrow it down to just one!
I adore the entire Penguin Deluxe Classics series, but my favorite of them all is, unsurprisingly, the Jane Austen novels collection:
http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/CoverImagePopup/0,,9780143039501,00.html
The cover design is simple, but so beautifully conveys the feeling of the novels with just fabric prints.
And Karyn, I love Kinuko Y. Craft too! Her picture book The Twelve Dancing Princesses was my first favorite book.
Annette Blair’s “Kitchen Witch”.
This is a bit of a cop out and more of a category of covers, but I really love old worn in hardcover books with gold lettering. When you look at these covers, you get a sense of how the book’s life was, rather than what the book’s story is about.
Ok hard question there are so many bur I would say the special edition of Philippa Gregorys “the white queen” I don’t have it….but it is amazing…..other then that my ooooold edition of gone with the wind and I really do love the fine art covers from the pink carnation series my favorite is emerald green and black tulip … Great question 🙂
Oops sorry emerald ring 🙂 keeps getting corrected on my spelling 🙂 anyway…..
It’s my classic Catcher in the Rye cover that’s white with the rainbow stripe … classic, understated, timeless.