{"id":7,"date":"2016-10-15T09:47:31","date_gmt":"2016-10-15T13:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/?p=7"},"modified":"2016-10-24T22:51:14","modified_gmt":"2016-10-25T02:51:14","slug":"you-cant-judge-a-book-by-its-cover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/you-cant-judge-a-book-by-its-cover\/","title":{"rendered":"You Can\u2019t Judge a Book by its Cover"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Annie Proulx learned to read when she was four. She read obsessively, as writers-to-be tend to do. When she was eight, she fell for Jack London\u2019s Before Adam, a book with a black buckram cover that \u201cinfluenced my choice of library books for years.\u201d When she was eleven, she was seduced by Mutiny on the Bounty, \u201cbound in tropic beach-sand beige. From then on I favoured books with beige covers.\u201d<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>My mother used to warn me, and Bo Diddley did, too:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Lch0o4wwGyw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wpdevart_lightbox_video\">You Can\u2019t Judge a Book by its Cover<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But I did. I still do. And I&#8217;m not the only one.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_23\" style=\"width: 332px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-23\" class=\"wp-image-23\" src=\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/you-cant-judge-a-book-by-its-cover.jpg\" alt=\"You Can't Judge a Book By The Cover - CD by Bo Diddley\" width=\"322\" height=\"322\" srcset=\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/you-cant-judge-a-book-by-its-cover.jpg 300w, http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/you-cant-judge-a-book-by-its-cover-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 322px) 100vw, 322px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-23\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><a title=\"This link will open in a new tab\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/You_Can%27t_Judge_a_Book_by_the_Cover \" target=\"_blank\">Image source<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>When my husband and I moved from\u00a0our country house to the city, we had\u00a0to reduce our 10,000-book library by a third. We\u00a0were about\u00a0to deliver the lasted orphaned\u00a0volumes to the Symphony Sale, when our real estate agent asked if she could take some.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSure!\u201d we said, delighted to have a reader for a realtor. For an hour she sat on the floor, making separate heaps of all the books with red covers, white covers, and deep blue covers to decorate other houses she was staging to sell. &#8220;Buyers love books!&#8221; she exclaimed. Or at least, they like the\u00a0covers.<\/p>\n<h2>First, book covers were slabs of wood<\/h2>\n<p>Stacks of parchment or vellum pages\u2014called codices\u2014were stored with pieces of wood laid on top to keep the loose sheets square and protected.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t until the fifth century that pages were bound together and fitted between hard covers made from thin wooden boards covered with leather. Because vellum was notorious for swelling during hot, humid weather, the wooden covers were often held together\u00a0with\u00a0leather or metal straps and clasps.<\/p>\n<p>These first bound books were stored flat on a shelf, spines facing back. The book lover\u00a0would write the title in ink along the fore-edges of the pages, the way I\u00a0used to print <em>MATH<\/em> and <em>GEOGRAPHY<\/em> on the fore-edges of my\u00a0high school textbooks so I\u2019d know what I was\u00a0grabbing from the jumble inside my\u00a0locker.<\/p>\n<p>Around the sixteenth century, readers started to stand their books up on the shelf; within a hundred years, books in every library stood at attention. To identify the standing book, printers glued a strip to the spine, printed with the title, author, and publisher.<\/p>\n<p>But not all\u00a0books came with\u00a0covers. As late as the nineteenth century, books were sold in plain paper wrappers, the pages temporarily stitched\u00a0together. Publishers weren\u2019t willing to shell out for\u00a0binding if the book wasn\u2019t going to sell. A book lover\u00a0was expected to take the book to a\u00a0binder and\u00a0have it bound to match his personal library.<\/p>\n<h2>I imagine my book shelves lined with identical spines.<\/h2>\n<p>No flashy colour, no variation in type. Nothing to distinguish a\u00a0specific\u00a0book but its title. It\u2019s a dreary, lawyerish thought.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_51\" style=\"width: 194px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Penguin.jpg\" rel=\"wpdevart_lightbox\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-51\" class=\"wp-image-51 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Penguin-184x300.jpg\" alt=\"To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf\" width=\"184\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Penguin-184x300.jpg 184w, http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Penguin-768x1255.jpg 768w, http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Penguin-626x1024.jpg 626w, http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Penguin.jpg 1308w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 184px) 100vw, 184px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-51\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><a title=\"This link will open in a new tab\" href=\"https:\/\/cdn.penguin.com.au\/covers\/original\/9780141194813.jpg \" target=\"_blank\">Image source<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>Scanning my\u00a0library, my eyes light on the soft, mouse-grey cover of <em>The Tale of Peter Rabbit<\/em>, the Beatrix Potter book my Aunt Marion gave to me the day I was born; the tatty paper <em>Fun with Dick and Jane<\/em> book that taught me to read; the white leather Bible I read cover to cover when I was eleven; the red Penguins, hard blue Hardys, fiery Salingers, and black-spined Capotes that fed my adolescence; the cheesy embossed <em>Gone with the Wind<\/em> I read straight through the night my son was born\u2014all the myriad volumes, slim and fat, ragged and pristine, that are the book-markers of\u00a0my life.<\/p>\n<p>The same thing happens when I look at the covers displayed on my iPad: the list is shorter because I have only a decade of digital reading stored there, but these covers do the same for me as the spines on my library shelves: they are my Proustian <em>madeleines<\/em>, opening stories in my memory without ever clicking on the book or pulling it from the shelf.<\/p>\n<h2>Jackets, not Covers<\/h2>\n<div id=\"attachment_49\" style=\"width: 176px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/american-gods-neil-gaiman-cover.jpg\" rel=\"wpdevart_lightbox\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-49\" class=\"wp-image-49 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/american-gods-neil-gaiman-cover-166x300.jpg\" alt=\"American Gods Neil Gaiman-cover\" width=\"166\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/american-gods-neil-gaiman-cover-166x300.jpg 166w, http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/american-gods-neil-gaiman-cover-567x1024.jpg 567w, http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/american-gods-neil-gaiman-cover.jpg 630w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 166px) 100vw, 166px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-49\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><a title=\"This link will open in a new tab.\" href=\"http:\/\/comicsalliance.com\/robert-mcginnis-neil-gaimans-novels-american-gods\/\" target=\"_blank\">Image source<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>Technically speaking, what I&#8217;m looking at\u00a0aren\u2019t book covers, they are dust jackets. Dust jackets evolved in the 19th century to\u00a0protect expensive\u00a0leather and silk covers. Books came\u00a0wrapped in plain paper that was\u00a0thrown away once the book got safely home. By then,\u00a0covers were decorative:\u00a0some jackets had cut-out windows that displayed\u00a0the beautiful &#8220;naked&#8221; cover designs.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn&#8217;t long before\u00a0publishers figured out that the dust jacket itself could be used to promote the book by drawing readers\u2019 attention much more cheaply. Within a couple of decades, most\u00a0dust jackets were illustrated; as jackets became more artful, book covers themselves lost their decorative edge.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/journal.neilgaiman.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">In a blog last summer<\/a>, Neil Gaiman admitted to a deep affection for the dust jackets of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. \u201cPaperback covers used to be beautiful, and were painted, and told you so much.\u201d When his publisher decided to reprint a series of Gaiman mass market paperbacks, he\u00a0asked if Robert McGinnis, the Picasso\u00a0of vintage paperback covers, could be commissioned for the \u201cgloriously retro covers.\u201d McGinnis, still working at 90,\u00a0agreed, and American Gods, the first of the new covers, was released a few months ago.<\/p>\n<h2>Plain Brown Wrappers<\/h2>\n<p>I remember my mother reading a book with a plain brown wrapper, intended to protect not the book, but her daughters\u2019 tender eyes. The book was <em>Fanny Hill<\/em>. <em>Lady Chatterley\u2019s Lover<\/em> arrived in our house in a similar disguise.<\/p>\n<p>Today I\u00a0don&#8217;t need a plain brown wrapper to read a banned book in peace: I\u00a0just call it up on my\u00a0ereader, which functions as a utilitarian, unadorned, generic cover. It\u2019s as if we\u2019ve time-travelled back through the centuries, paying for the pages and paying again for the covers to keep them safe from wear and prying eyes.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_55\" style=\"width: 271px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/booksfuture2.jpg\" rel=\"wpdevart_lightbox\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-55\" class=\"wp-image-55\" src=\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/booksfuture2-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"The inside of a book that looks like a computer.\" width=\"261\" height=\"174\" srcset=\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/booksfuture2-300x200.jpg 300w, http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/booksfuture2.jpg 450w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 261px) 100vw, 261px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-55\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><a title=\"This link will open in a new tab\" href=\"http:\/\/www.toxel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/booksfuture2.jpg \" target=\"_blank\">Image source<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>A local used-book dealer told me about a fellow who came into his store looking for a book. Not a particular title or a certain author; he just wanted a book about yay\u00a0big by yay\u00a0thick. He spent the afternoon roaming the aisles and finally came to the counter triumphantly carrying his chosen book, his ereader perched on top. His plan was to cut out the pages of the paper book to make a cover\u00a0for his Kindle\u2014a secret within a secret within a secret.<\/p>\n<p>When I was thirteen, I hid my nurse novels inside the pages of thick Thomas B. Costain sagas. Later, my friends and I would to stroll down the aisle of a train or a bus and concoct stories about the passengers based on whether they were reading Jacqueline Suzanne, Erica Jong, or Margaret Atwood<em>.<\/em> Now such strolls yield little more than plain brown\u2014or blue or pink\u2014ereader covers.<\/p>\n<p>It makes me wonder: would Fifty Shades of Gray have been such a bestseller if\u00a0ereaders hadn&#8217;t yet been invented?[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][vc_column_text css=&#8221;.vc_custom_1477363865032{padding-top: 10px !important;padding-right: 10px !important;padding-bottom: 10px !important;padding-left: 10px !important;background-color: #ededed !important;background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: cover !important;border-radius: 2px !important;}&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">Is there a book cover you&#8217;ll never forget? Do you remove the dust jacket when you read a book?<\/h3>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text][vc_separator][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Annie Proulx learned to read when she was four. She read obsessively, as writers-to-be tend to do. When she was eight, she fell for Jack London\u2019s Before Adam, a book with a black buckram cover that \u201cinfluenced my choice of library books for years.\u201d When she was eleven, she was seduced by Mutiny on the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6,8,4,7],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-history","tag-book-cover-art","tag-dust-jackets","tag-old-books","tag-things-my-mother-told-me","invicta_simple_style_entry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>You Can\u2019t Judge a Book by its Cover - Books UnPacked Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/you-cant-judge-a-book-by-its-cover\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"You Can\u2019t Judge a Book by its Cover - Books UnPacked Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Annie Proulx learned to read when she was four. She read obsessively, as writers-to-be tend to do. When she was eight, she fell for Jack London\u2019s Before Adam, a book with a black buckram cover that \u201cinfluenced my choice of library books for years.\u201d When she was eleven, she was seduced by Mutiny on the [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/you-cant-judge-a-book-by-its-cover\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Books UnPacked Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-10-15T13:47:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-10-25T02:51:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/old-book-cover.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"690\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"373\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Merilyn Simonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Merilyn Simonds\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/merilynsimonds.com\\\/books-unpacked-blog\\\/you-cant-judge-a-book-by-its-cover\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/merilynsimonds.com\\\/books-unpacked-blog\\\/you-cant-judge-a-book-by-its-cover\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Merilyn Simonds\",\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/merilynsimonds.com\\\/books-unpacked-blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/22df72b6c19c900fa25746e759c324f3\"},\"headline\":\"You Can\u2019t Judge a Book by its Cover\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-10-15T13:47:31+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-10-25T02:51:14+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/merilynsimonds.com\\\/books-unpacked-blog\\\/you-cant-judge-a-book-by-its-cover\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1264,\"commentCount\":13,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/merilynsimonds.com\\\/books-unpacked-blog\\\/you-cant-judge-a-book-by-its-cover\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\\\/\\\/merilynsimonds.com\\\/books-unpacked-blog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/old-book-cover.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"book cover art\",\"dust jackets\",\"old books\",\"things my mother told me\"],\"articleSection\":[\"book history\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-CA\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/merilynsimonds.com\\\/books-unpacked-blog\\\/you-cant-judge-a-book-by-its-cover\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/merilynsimonds.com\\\/books-unpacked-blog\\\/you-cant-judge-a-book-by-its-cover\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/merilynsimonds.com\\\/books-unpacked-blog\\\/you-cant-judge-a-book-by-its-cover\\\/\",\"name\":\"You Can\u2019t Judge a Book by its Cover - 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