I don’t have a ton of re-designs I loved or hated, but I do have a few special editions I like and wish were the only editions, and a few books I wish had better editions but I haven’t found any!
Books I don’t love the covers of in any edition:
I love some of these books but hate all the covers. I’ve ended up buying the best of a bad bunch of all of them, but I really wish someone would come up with better options!
Cover re-designs I love or hate:
This is the first set of covers that comes to mind when I think of a tragic re-design. The cover on the left is the style of the books in the Jackson Brodie series (as well as a couple of Atkinson’s other books) as advertised online, but apparently some crazy person decided to replace those lovely covers with the one on the right. I haven’t been able to find the original covers for any of her Jackson Brodie series, and because of that I refuse to buy them. I hate the covers that are available with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. What were they thinking????
I love the new 4th Estate covers of Adichie’s books that have come out recently – all of them are wonderful. Some of the other editions of her books are fine too, but this matching set is just great.
As some of you know, street art is my jam. Shephard Fairey (often known a Obey or Obey Giant) is one of my favourite street artists. His work is crisp, clean, and often full of important images and messaging. I can’t think of a better artist to design Orwell’s covers, and I absolutely love the Shephard Fairey editions of his classics. I’m not even an Orwell fan, but I have all of them.
There are few book covers I dislike as much as the wedding party cover of this book. It put me off picking the book up for a long time, and I think has played a part in my continual procrastination when it comes to reading it. I much prefer the black and white cover, but haven’t been able to get my hands on it, so I’m stuck with the horrid mess that is the wedding cover. Ugh.
I’m not sure which of these came first, or if one is an international edition, but I far prefer the black and white cover to the pink one.
I love the new editions that have recently come out of Miriam Toews’ books. Some of the original covers were cool too, but the new ones are even better.
Both of these are at least partly times changing. They’re novels that have been out for a while, but the newer covers have really updated the look of these classics and, hopefully, will make them appealing to a whole new audience.
I wasn’t crazy about the original cover for this one, but I absolutely love the new one.
This post was particularly frustrating to put together because I know there are so many other examples I’m just forgetting about, and that for years I will stumble across them and remember this post and kick myself for not including them. But of course, I can’t think of any of the ones I know have driven me nuts over the years. Let me know which covers have always driven you nuts or even stopped you picking up a book. And covers you absolutely love and that have made a book more appealing!
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly link-up feature created by The Broke and the Bookish and hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every week TTT has a different topic, and everyone who links up has to create a link of ten items that fit that topic. To see past and upcoming topics, go here.
Ooh, I like the twist that you did for some of these! There are a lot of books I like with literally no good covers. And then there’s one that have SO MANY GOOD COVERS and I get overwhelmed. That being said, Sweetbitter is one of my favourite novels of all time and I’m rereading it. Mine is a white background with a wine glass and is very minimal/better than that pink one BUT oh my gosh the other one you listed is so much nicer and should just be the worldwide version of it, dang.
Anyways! Great picks! This was such a fun post.
I love your list! I don’t pay too much attention to cover redesigns. I guess if you really want a particular cover, you could go to Goodreads, find out what edition you need, and then try to find it on eBay or the Collectible section of Amazon.com.
I don’t generally pay that much attention either – I look at the covers available when I want a book and generally go for the one I like most (assuming they’re around the same price, otherwise it’s usually the cheapest). I did once try to find the Kate Atkinson covers I liked, but do you know what I discovered? Publishers use the same ISBN numbers for new editions of the same book. So that makes it impossible to be certain which cover you’re going to get if you’re ordering from somewhere like Book Depository that won’t do individual requests. It’s rather annoying, so I just gave up after getting one that wasn’t the edition I wanted. Oh well! It’s really the inside that counts anyway, eh.
There’s a lot of books here that I haven’t heard of ,but I totally agree with your thoughts <3 Great post.
I don’t often pay attention to when books get covers redesigned so this week was a bit of a toughie for me! 😂 This is a great list though! I like that cover on the left for Half of a Yellow Sun. I didn’t have any particularly strong feelings about the wedding party cover of Ferrante’s book but I do like the redesign more and although I haven’t read it yet, from what I’ve heard, I think it’s more fitting with the story, right? Love the redesign for Salvage the Bones–so much nicer than the original lol
My TTT post
I have a sneaking suspicion the Elena Ferrante is just an international edition rather than a re-design, and when I looked for it it was unavailable everywhere. I have the wedding party one, but I haven’t finished the book yet (I’ve tried three times and never make it past about 50 pages) so I don’t actually know which suits the story best. I just find that one very unappealing! Agree on Salvage!
Oh no! It’s actually one of the books that I’ve had on my shelf for the longest time and I don’t know why I’ve just never had the big pull to pick it up. I heard it was a bit of a slow burn but worth it in the end. Hope you do make it past the 50 page mark one day — if you decide it’s worth it)! Lol
I’m laughing at ‘covers I didn’t like on any edition’ because yeah, sometimes they’re all not great.
Top Ten Tuesday.
Honestly, the wedding cover of My Brilliant Friend is why I haven’t read it yet either! It’s not appealing to me in the least. But maybe the story would be?!
My TTT.
Funny how sometimes the originals are so much better and sometimes the new ones are better.
I didn’t know Shephard Fairey made the redesigns for Orwell’s books! I have to agree, they are really beautiful.