It’s a freebie week on Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by The Broke and the Bookish) – we’re free to pick any topic our little hearts desire. Since I just start participating in TTT, I decided to look back through the old topics and select one I wanted to do. I love book cover design, so I quickly settled on sharing my favorite book covers.
I decided to limit this to books that I own, so that I had a starting point. Otherwise there would just be way too many gorgeous covers to choose from. I also tend to love series design, so several of these will feature my favorite series as a whole.
Here we go: my top ten favorite book cover designs!
1. The Penguin Threads series is easily my all-time favorite set of book covers. I love embroidery, and these covers are masterful pieces of art. They were all hand-created, and on the inside of the cover you can see the back of the embroidery, which is a perfect touch. They are beautiful, and I wish there were more than six! They are all also wonderful classics, which makes this series even more fun to own.
2. I Capture the Castle seems to be on every bookish list I could create: favorite titles, favorite first lines, favorite books, favorite narrators, etc. And it’s also one of my favorite covers. I can’t precisely put my finger on what, but something about this design perfectly captures the spirit of the book. When I first laid eyes on it, I knew it would be something I loved.
3. When Special Topics in Calamity Physics first came out, I bought it, read it, loved it, and went to go meet the author and get my hardcover copy signed. I liked the hardcover design quite a bit, but a few weeks later I got a glimpse of the UK cover on an English friend’s blog. And I was filled with jealousy. I loved the UK cover. Eventually I found a copy of it for $5 at a used bookstore, and bought it even though I owned a signed US hardcover. I kept it around for several years, and then last year decided it had to go during my book purging. (Oh the difficulties of bookworms.)
4. Vintage Classics. I have about 15 of the Vintage Classics series that feature a cream colored cover with a simple and lovely illustration, and I love the way they look lined up on my shelf. The seven triangles along the side pull the design of the series together in a simple, effective way. My favorite is probably Wuthering Heights, I love those ferns. My Jane Austen set is from this series as well.
5. The Mysterious Benedict Society series. I picture a meeting about the first book published in this series, The Mysterious Benedict Society, where everyone sat down and tried to create a cover that would make it utterly impossible for me to resist buying the book and reading it, and they came up with this winner. I love the covers and illustrations within this series, they have an “instant classic” feel.
6. The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet: this cover promises a fun, interesting adventure, and the novel delivers it.
7. Where’d You Go Bernadette – if ever there was a cover that perfectly captures the heart and spirit of a book, this is it.
8. Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon – you really have to see this one in person to appreciate the beautiful layered jacket design, but it’s a stunner. McSweeney’s has some of the best book design in the business.
9. One of Our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde: The cover design for the Thursday Next series keeps getting better and better. This one is my favorite, and I love the writing on the bottom of the books:
10. The Hobbit 75th Anniversary edition. I love the simplicity of this illustration, and the ominous, adventurous look of those mountains.
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What are some of your favorite book covers?
Wow, those Penguin threads covers are amazing!
Agree – I was floored by them when I first saw them! My favorites by a very wide margin. :)
Those are some great picks, Emily! I love those Penguin covers, wowza. Many of these are outside my normal cover wheelhouse, and it’s always fun to see what someone else relates to. Where our venn diagrams are a complete overlap is with Bernadette. How I loved that cover and the book. I was so glad they didn’t change the cover for the paperback. This was a great idea for the free top 10, wish I’d thought of it! :)
Likewise! I heard about Bernadette shortly before the paperback came out, and I would have been so disappointed if they had changed it! I try to wait for paperbacks whenever I can, and I hate when they change the covers to something less appealing. In some cases though, the paperback cover is an improvement, so I guess it all balances out. :)
I’m completely floored by those Penguin book covers. I’d not seen or heard of them before and they really are pieces of art. I can’t imagine the time and energy that would go into sewing those! Off the top of my head the last cover that really stood out to me was for Compendium by Alia Luria .
I’m so glad you now know about them now! They are so very incredible.
I just looked up the cover of Compendium and you’re right – it’s fantastic! Looks so magical.
Those are some beautiful book covers indeed!!
Thank you! I love them, they are very fun books to own! :)
thank you for sharing the penguin threads! i’m a hardcore book cover enthusiast and I NEED THOSE IN MY LIFE. all of these are gorgeous!! <333
So glad you like them too! They are just marvelous, aren’t they?
Ohh, I never saw the threads version of Wind in the Willows. I’ve seen many of the others, but that one slipped by…and it’s SO great.
Agreed!! It’s my favorite of the six.
You know, I’m usually not a huge fan of hand-drawn book covers. Don’t know why, but they don’t appeal to me all that much. But, oh my goodness, the ones you chose are all so beautiful! It’s amazing what artists can create. Wow.
Happy TTT!
It is pretty incredible – they are very talented artists! I wish they’d do more!
The Penguin thread covers! HOW have I never seen these before?! I am immediately filled with booklust.
I’m with you on I Capture the Castle – I got it for Christmas one year in high school and immediately remember feeling like the cover was a very, very good sign.
If they ever make more Penguin Threads books I’d buy them immediately – even if it was a book I didn’t care for, that’s how much I adore those covers! Luckily the books they chose for the series are all lovely!
Happy to hear that you had a similar reaction to the I Capture the Castle cover – it’s just wonderful! :)
The Penguin Threads! The Penguin Threads! I’ve NEVER seen these book covers before—thank you for introducing me to such gorgeous books! I assume, because they’re hand-made, that they’re a limited-edition item and I probably can’t go buy up the whole series at Barnes & Noble? ;)
I can just envision how Maps and Legends looks and feels in the hands!
I was just thinking today about how, even though my Kindle is convenient and I adore it, there’s just nothing like laying eyes on a beautiful hardcover or paperback and making it your own. If only there were a way to combine the convenience of e-readers and the beauty of paperbound books!
You can buy them! That’s what’s so incredible. The covers were hand made, but they reproduced them exactly on the printed books, and they look FANTASTIC. They even printed the “backs” of the embroidery on the inside of the cover – it’s perfect and lovely! Not every bookstore stocks them, but Barnes and Noble might have them!
Gawd, I love the Penguin Threads. For our first dating anniversary, my now-husband gave me the Wizard of Oz cover, framed. He had to scrounge around on Pinterest to figure out exactly how to remove the cover without damaging it. Sooo coool. It’s so pretty all laid out in one continuous image. Love all the ones you’ve chosen here!
That’s an incredible gift – I’m sure there were a million additional reasons you married him, but that act alone is pretty awesome!! :D
I wish they’d make more Penguin threads, I’d buy nearly any title if they continued those gorgeous pieces of art.