Judging a book by its cover

Lately I'm finding that the titles that I am the most eager to read are the ones I think have the most appealing cover art.

(In the photo)
*The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
*The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
*The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry
*The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas
*The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe
*Grayson by Lynne Cox

In general, we are taught not to judge a book by its cover.  And I fully believe that to be true, particularly when the cover includes people.  I try to ignore any cover art that attempts to represent the main character(s) because, almost always, the publisher fails to accurately capture my mental image of him/her/them based on the actual book content.  To me, the book content-to-cover art dilemma is a static version of the book-to-movie dilemma.  I think it is quite nearly impossible to visually adapt book content simply because the brain interprets book content far more dimensionally (aka through all of the senses) than is possible through one medium (vision).  Having watched the Harry Potter, Twilight, and Time Traveler's Wife movies and being disappointed with their adaptations, I have no interest in ever seeing the movie versions of my favourite books.  Even if they ever made the Corinna Chapman series into movies, I wouldn't watch them because I much prefer my mental images.

But I still love cover art in general.  I have seen cover art that I think is truly beautiful on a book that I have no interest in reading.  Cover art truly is an art...and, just like general art, some of it is better than the rest.

Read on,
Paula