Top Ten Tuesday - Books I Read Because of the Title or Cover

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted at The Broke and The Bookish


This Week's Prompt:
Top Ten Books Whose Titles Or Covers Made Me Buy Them


I've been skipping a lot of the memes lately, but this one deserves a little comment I think. Although, in my case, many of these books should be called Books whose Titles or Covers made me take them home from the library...


1: James Bond Series, by Ian Fleming

Okay, I read most of this series from the library initially, but I liked the covers on these editions so much that I bought them. They look like old school over-the-top movie posters, and I love it.

They look great on the shelf, the colors are bright and bold, and each spine has a little piece of the picture above the title. I don't tend to take them on the subway, though...

2: The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry

I remember not liking this book as much by the end as I had at the start, but it was the striking cover that made me pick it up at the library.

3: Mister B. Gone, by Clive Barker

More a cute conceit than really a great book, but nicely creepy (a good Halloween pick!) and has gorgeous internal and external design.

The idea: it's a demon, trapped in a book, telling you his story.

4: Ilium, by Dan Simmons

This, not Hyperion, was the first book I read by Dan Simmons, and I picked it out just because I was intrigued by the title and the cover enough to read the back.

It's Greek Myth plus far-future sci-fi, cloning, The Tempest, and a pair of highly literate robots. I'm not sure it's great, but it's definitely ambitious.

5: Recursion, by Tony Ballantyne

Another library book pulled out for its pretty cover. Intriguing, if over-complicated, sci-fi about nano-machines, AI, and fate.

6: The Looking Glass Wars, by Frank Beddor

The problem, I find, with picking out books by cover or title, is that I usually end up disappointed. This was a cool concept, a promising beginning, but I felt it fizzled in the middle somewhere.


I could just fill the rest of this list with wonderful Guy Gavriel Kay titles. So I think I will.



7: Tigana 

Tigana I read between my third or fourth years in college. I had a library edition that was hard cover, had lost its dust jacket, so I had nothing but the title and a vague impression that the author wrote fantasy to go on. I had been so busy with school work, and consciously catching up with classics, that I hadn't really read a novel in some time. I loved this book, and it reminded me how much I love fantasy and need it in my life.

8-10: Sailing to Sarantium, The Lions of Al-Rassan, A Song for Arbonne

All evocative, marvelous titles for great books.

I feel sure I'm forgetting something important though... I'm sure one of you knows a book with an amazing title I shouldn't have left off this list...