The importance of book covers

When you are browsing your favorite book store, without a particular title in mind, you generally pick up books based off how interesting their covers are.

If a cover is very simple and has little to no artwork, more attention is brought to the title and therefore should be one that sounds intriguing enough to get the potential reader to pick the book up off the shelf and read the summary on the back or inside of the book.

Others choose to have a complex image on it and these tend to illustrate a specific scene within the book. Some covers have visuals that don't really tie in at all with the actual story and probably the reason they say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover.

Font and color are also things that will catch a shopper's eye and help them decide in picking it up or not. If the book title written in a flowery font and covered in pink, someone looking for a Gothic romance wouldn't give it a second glance.

The same can go for those who avoid the dark and grim tales. They aren't about to pick up a book when its cover is all black with a pair of blood-soaked fangs. Book covers help readers sort visually what type of story they are looking for.

Book covers can vary from those rare finds where the cover is like a siren's song and you are immediately drawn to it and snatch it up to see if the plot sounds as good as the cover seems to allude to, to the ones that are so vague and dull looking you halfheartedly flip through to see if perhaps it is an ugly duckling book who just doesn't look as good as the rest.

The purpose of book covers is to attract the buyer's attention long enough for them to find the book worth their money. If a book has a lackluster cover it is not necessarily going to do poorly, but if it does not have word of mouth helping it, people are less likely to pick it up.

Below is a video of me citing specific examples of book covers and why they caught my attention. Feel free to watch or ignore, it's up to you.

Click here for the video of me talking more about book covers

(P.S. Sorry about the sound, I was trying to be quiet in the morning. You can hear it better with headphones in.)

Why there will never be a perfect book-to-movie adaptation

It is a fever dream of every avid reader: to have their favorite book made into a movie and to have it done accurately. While the first part is often accomplished (movie producers can't overlook an already established fan base) the second half has yet to be seen.

Of course there are some adaptations that are done well, but there will always be the complainers, the ones who were mad that a minor scene or line was left out or how a character did not look like how they are described in the book.

The author could have stated plainly in the book that so-and-so looks exactly like Taylor Lautner, but you will always have some readers who picture them differently. This comes from varying interpretations of the descriptions or how the character acts. They could be depicted physically in one way but their personality causes the reader to think of them in another way.

Another thing that will forever bother readers is the time constraint. Taking a huge novel and condensing it into a two to two and half hour movie is a challenge that most viewers seem to forget. Certain scenes are regrettably cut, but when the producers have to choose between telling the story and making sure everything ever mentioned in the book is filmed. When it comes down to it, the answer is obvious.

Lately, movies have tried to correct this by making movies into parts such as "Breaking Dawn - Part 1" and "Part 2" and "The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey" so they can cover more of the events in the book, while making more money on their part too since they can now take a single work and turn it into a trilogy if they want to.

One problem that can also be encountered is production. Depending on the technology available, some adaptations suffer for poor visual effects that try to convey the fantastical setting of the book. While it is not a book to movie adaptation, James Cameron's "Avatar" movie is a good example of waiting for the technology to catch up with the concept. He originally came up with the story in 1994, but it wasn't until 2009 that the movie was released.

The number one reason why there will never be a perfect adaption is the fact that everyone pictures it differently. While some movies, like the "Harry Potter" series, do a good overall job at capturing the feel and magic of Hogwarts, every reader constructs their own version of the world they all love.

An example is a map of Panem, from "The Hunger Games" series. If you were to look for a map of Panem you would encounter several different interpretations. Some are similar, but none are exactly alike.

These are just a few of the examples of readers different opinions of what Panem looks like

The point is that people will never be satisfied with the movie version, if they have read the book, because in the translation of words to visuals the intangible pleasure of creating your own images is lost.

YA topic evolution

Young adult books, better known as YA, are the books that teens read and one out of pack gets chosen to become the model for the rest for that time period.

To elaborate, from the time I became an avid reader, "Harry Potter" was the thing every kid was reading or wanted to read. If you noticed, similar novels during this time focused on witches and wizard and the like. The series "Children of the Red King" by Jenny Nimmo is an example of a magical themed series that picked up in the middle of Potter-mania.

The iconic "Harry Potter" series

The next fantasy fad was spawned by Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" series. The rise of vampires and their love stories soon followed. Each author tried to add a different twist to differentiate from Meyer's massively successful vampire/werewolf/human love triangle. A smaller amount of werewolf/shapeshifter themed books also appeared during this time period.

Some of the other vampire book series that appeared are "Vampire Academy" by Richelle Meads and "The House of Night" by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast. There is also a branch of novels written making fun of the vampire romances for those who aren't fans of "Twilight."

The shift to the next genre was not as dramatically noted, but "The Mortal Instruments" series by Cassandra Clare is probably the best example that people are familiar with since the first book has recently been made into a movie. The theme this time is fallen angels, demons, and angels in general. There is much more diversity in this field because of the different interpretations of angels.

"Fallen" by Lauren Kate is a Gothic love triangle between a girl and two fallen angels, but one chose to side with Lucifer. In Becca Fitzpatrick's "Hush, Hush" series is about another girl who falls in love with a fallen angel, but discovers her own angelic heritage.

The current YA literature topic is the undead. Anything zombie is immediately devoured by readers, no pun intended. The trailblazer for this genre is Max Brooks with his "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War." While there were previous zombie books, this was the one that started the forest fire and hit TV show "The Walking Dead" based on a comic book series continues to fuel the current fantasy fandom.

However, there is a new mythical creature focus that is brewing and slowly on the rise. And that, my friends, is mermaids. Yes, wait and see soon the bookstore teen section will be covered with them. The "Lost Voices" trilogy by Sarah Porter is probably one of the earliest examples of this rising theme.

"The Twice Lost" which is the third and final installment of Sarah Porter's "Lost Voices" series

To list some other mermaid titles would be "Between the Sea and Sky" by Jaclyn Dolamore, "Fins Are Forever" by Tera Lynn Childs, and "Of Poseidon" by Anna Banks are just a few of the new fantasy genre for YA.

There is no telling where the YA books will turn to next, but it is sure to stay in the supernatural and/or fantasy world because let's face it people want to read about things you don't find in real life.