We all know that ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ rarely works, but today I want to look further into the effects of this, what it means in actuality.

This post has been brewing in my mind for a while because the action behind it is something that’s often happening but not always noticeable, subconscious – the way a book’s cover informs and affects your reading of the book, particularly, I think, in the case of hardbacks where you can see the edges of the flaps.

It was Sunjeev Sahota’s The Year Of The Runaways that first alerted me to this concept. The book is rather depressing, it’s depressing in its content and I personally found it not too great a book, but I wondered how much the cover of it – the yellow and burnt orange, the autumnal leaves, the murky brown background – was affecting the overall atmosphere of it for me. Because I don’t expect Sahota had the cover, designed later by someone else, in mind whilst he wrote the book.

Certainly the colours and the slight wishy-washy nature of the brownness fit the content but did it not make the book seem even more dark and dirty than it was? A fitting visual but somehow depressing on a literary enjoyment level – it wasn’t the concept or theme of the book that made it a long read for me and there was something else going on other than the plotting issues (those did make it long).

I wonder if I’d have enjoyed the reading experience more if mine had been the lighter coloured paperback edition.

This leads me to colour choice. Colour choice can have a big affect though with modernity has come jazzy covers and with jazzy covers more expression (compared to standard old works, for example, where the books look mature but not very appealing). Colour is pretty subjective – one’s ‘reminds me of the ocean and I love sailing’ might be another’s ‘my old school uniform, yuck!’ I think the way people often like to shelve their books by colour shows a bit of this interest we have in them.

(I got to thinking about colour and the notion to write this post when reading Sara Taylor’s latest, The Lauras. It sports a fun, map-filled, cover that also evokes scrapbook paper sets and pin boards but the resounding colour of it, blue, well, it corresponds to a road trip to me, the shade of blue, the way I can see Florida and the ocean in it. If it had been brown, to use the Sahota example, would I have found it more sophisticated than fun?)

Another thing I’ve been thinking about is associated with this – the way colour is part and parcel of your reading experience can mean that if you read the book again using another edition, whilst the story is obviously the same you are having a new experience of it, physically. Your current age may be a factor, but I reckon if you read a book twice over, once then a second time immediately following the first, with two different editions, those two times would seem different. The second may even seem wrong. In this way font choice also holds sway.

I’ll have to look into those last two factors in greater detail sometime.

Have you found this connection between reading and book cover in your own experiences? What colours draw you in?

I’ve spoken before about having multiple copies of books (and will always remember Jeanne’s comment about how she and her husband gave away any duplicates they had when they set up home) and I’ve spoken about that gift-giving situation where there’s discomfort if you ask if the person’s read the book yet. Today I’m combining the two topics.

There have only been a few times in my life where I’ve been given a book I already own and almost all those occasions have involved people thinking about what I’d like and simply not knowing I already had the book they chose for me. The gifting presents a question: what should you do – give away the new copy, give away the old copy, or keep both? The last is usually a bit much but I’ve a story about that in a moment (this is besides the research copy/reading copy I mentioned in my multiple copies post). I’m personally not fond of the idea of saying, ‘thanks, but I already own this,’ as it’s asking for hurt feelings – whatever you choose to do, between the choices of giving away a copy or keeping both, you’re going to end up with an item that the person will presumably spot on your shelves and positive assumptions should be made.

My most recent story, then, the one mentioned above, is one I’ll always remember. I once read a book series in order and didn’t read any other books in between volumes. I mainly read them in the living room, a common room. That Christmas, I received, from someone who didn’t live with us but was often around, the next book that came after the one I’d just finished. But I already had a copy of this book waiting for me, just not in a common room.

The thing is, this present showed me how much effort the person had gone to in choosing me a suitable present. We had briefly spoken books but not about the series; they had obviously noted not just what I was reading but which was the next book in the running order. In terms of effort and thought, it is the best present I’ve ever received and the person was more acquaintance than friend. Both copies were the same but then they weren’t – one was just a book on my shelf, the other was a thoughtful gift. That the person passed away shortly afterwards made that copy all the more special to me and so I have kept both my own previous copy, which I use as my flick-through, and the one they gave me which will be kept for sentimental reasons and because I will in due course pass it on to one of their relatives.

Another story: a friend who, during my ‘Lisa Jewell phase’, when I was just re-entering the world of books as my post-school hatred started to wane and I was following her career in earnest, bought me Jewell’s latest. I’d already read it as I lapped up every new release within the first week of publication, but the gift showed a lot of thought. I passed this copy on.

There is a time and a place for multiples and things you wouldn’t normally keep. There are also times to pass a book on.

Have you any book present stories you’d like to share?

This photograph was taken by Anna Loverus (no longer on Flickr).

It’s something you don’t think will happen if you’re only reading good books and abandon those you’re not enjoying – you think you won’t fall into a slump.

At least that was my belief when I was going through a good reading period. Not every book was top notch but none were bad; at worst they were good enough.

I paused in my reading when I was at Hay – I took a single book with me, a lengthy one, intending to finish it because I’d made a date for the review. And I was enjoying it, the lowest star likely from me was 4. Because it was hard to find the time when I was being drawn to Twitter and had filled my days with events, it wasn’t really a slump, it was a time issue, but in the exercise of it it was rather like a slump.

I think we can get into slumps if all we’re reading are good books, super-duper books, even. In this case it’s because, ironically, our reading would be lacking variety – we surely need a mix of good and not so to fully appreciate literature and appreciate excellent books. Those of us who write about reading would have less space for critique and gushing can get dull. Even if we didn’t have slumps, we’d need varied books if we were to be good, informed, readers. Without the bad, life would be boring, we’d have fewer conversations, debates. And we need variety to help us improve, to help us recognise what works and what doesn’t. We might scorn bad books, but we need them.

This all said it’s not something we need to worry about happening – it’d be pretty impossible to actually achieve because you never know until you’re into a book whether you’ll truly like it. Even if you abandon a book you’ve still experienced a bit of it.

I’m getting off topic, so: do you get into slumps when you’re in a good book period? What do you think would happen if great was all you knew?

Sorting through my posts a while back, organising my editorial calendar, I noticed how many reviews I hadn’t posted lately, and also, that of those I had posted, there were many for books I’d been sent. On average I’d posted fewer than one review a week, very different to my pre-calendar days, though that was in part due to an abundance of other writing topics. Less pleasing to me was the number of reviews of sent books versus those owned or borrowed – about 70% sent.

That percentage was something I could work with. It had just been a case that I’d had a lot of review copies lately and read them one after the other. I did have reviews for owned books but those were scheduled later on due to publishing dates as well as my preference to ‘first come first serve’ my reviews. I started wondering if this was okay, if having many sent book reviews in a month was okay. It kind of had to be at that point but I made a mental note not to do it again.

Do you think/feel there’s a balance that should be struck between review copies and owned books? This is a question requiring personal answers, particularly because bloggers all blog in their own ways. Some only review books publishers send them, others only older books, some library books, and that’s their ‘thing’, but what’s your personal preference as a blog reader? For me in terms of my blog it’s 50/50 but timing does play a part.

Your thoughts?

Do you ever get so excited by all the possibilities of reading – the numbers, the different countries and translations, the stories and the eras – that you don’t get any reading done at all? I do. It’s happened as I wrote this.

It’s in a similar vein but not the same as being overwhelmed by choice. It’s more about literary pleasure, that buzz you get from reading, than any pile. In this case, I was about to read Bird In A Cage. Browsing through the first pages, I noted it was published in 1961 – another older book! I noted it was a French book – translation!

And it wasn’t that I couldn’t start the book – I could – but some sort of procrastination set upon me. I felt daunted.

This… thing mostly happens when I’ve been leading up to reading the book in question, when I’ve been working my way through the pile and have had the title move towards me until it’s next. In this particular case it was a short book, so I recognise also the possibility I was daunted because I’d only just finished reading and reviewing a book that needed a lot of brain power and with this next, short, book, that time would arrive again swiftly.

I sometimes think that the feeling of excitement and possibility that comes before you start a book, and the accompanying feeling of fulfilment at another book finished that you can now talk about – that in between time books – is much better than the sort of limbo you’re in when in the midst of reading a book. I love the process of reading immensely but there’s a sort of pausing of time when you’re reading, time that starts up again when you’ve finished. Talking about books is a big thing to me, as I know it is to you, and only so much of that can happen during the reading – anything that can be said is always going to be subject to change.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed?