Follow Friday #5

Follow Friday is hosted by Parajunkee over at Parajunkee's View every week.

This weeks FF question:

Q. Do you judge a book by it's cover?

A. Sad to say (for like the 5th time unfortunately) but I do. I know, I KNOW. "Don't judge a book by it's cover" and all that jazz. But come on, I'm not the only one that does it. Right? Right. Par example: I started reading the Wicked Lovely series (albeit in the wrong place) because of how beautiful I thought the cover for Fragile Eternity was. I mean look at it. It's absolutely GORGEOUS. Obviously once I started reading it I realized I'd started in the middle so I had to go pick up Wicked Lovely ASAP.

Now, on the flip side of that coin, I thought the cover for Tower of Change was pretty spiffy too. Kind of mysterious with the moss covering up the key and the scroll work around the outside edges. And the butterflies I thought added a nice touch. HOWEVER... I would not touch that book again with a 10 foot pole if you PAID me. I had to struggle my way over TONS of errors and just bad writing for 50 pages before I was ready to give up (see my review here). Apparently I was a glutton for punishment because I told myself that maybe it would get better if I kept reading. So I waded through the next 50 pages befoer giving up entirely. Lesson learned? Pretty cover is NOT equal to good book.

Now, another flip side (didn't you know coins had more than 2 sides? I did)... I DIDN'T pick up the hunger games because I thought the covers were plain. How awful is that? I passed them over time after time after TIME (see a pattern here?) because I looked and thought "Nah...". Here's your sign. The cover's aren't plain, they're simple. They don't need to be flashy and full of color and swirls and whatever else. The BOOKS had enough action and color and ALL OF THAT OTHER STUFF. To make the cover match the story itself would have done it a disservice. And once I knew the significance of the symbol on the cover, I never gave it a second thought. Phenomenal series.

I really should stop trying to pick my books based on what they look like... really. I probably won't though. Is that bad? Meh. At least I'm not alone in my snobbishness. :-)