{"id":488,"date":"2007-04-05T22:02:57","date_gmt":"2007-04-06T06:02:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/?p=488"},"modified":"2016-10-12T09:16:17","modified_gmt":"2016-10-12T16:16:17","slug":"book-covers-and-the-imagination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/book-covers-and-the-imagination","title":{"rendered":"Book Covers and the Imagination"},"content":{"rendered":"

While you can’t judge a book by its cover, a beautiful cover makes a book all the more enjoyable. During the next few weeks I am going to be featuring some great book cover artists.<\/p>\n

I don’t know about you, but when I try to picture what I’m reading, I find that the cover of a book often provides the color palette that my imagination uses to form the pictures. For instance, I have a very hard time reading science fiction paperbacks from the 1960s with those washed-out, almost abstract cover images. It’s like watching a grainy, dirty film. I almost always try to find a reprint with more bold colors.<\/p>\n

When I first tried reading\u00a0Foundation<\/a><\/em> by Isaac Asimov, I just couldn’t get into it–it seemed so dingy. But when I came across a newer edition of the book with a brighter cover I gave it another try and I ended up loving it.<\/p>\n

\"Foundation

Foundation and Empire<\/em>, 1960s, The Foundation Trilogy<\/em>, 1980s<\/p><\/div>\n

Does this happen to anyone else, or is it just me?<\/p>\n

Sometimes it bothers me to think that a book cover has that much sway over my reaction to a book, but I’ve always had difficulty in picturing things in my mind. I would make a horrible interior decorator. Over the years I’ve gotten better at ignoring “bad” book covers, but it takes quite a bit of mental effort. That’s why cover artists are so important to me.<\/p>\n

I’ll begin tomorrow with one of the acknowledged masters of cover art, Michael Whelan. Who else would you like to see featured? Leave a comment and let me know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While you can’t judge a book by its cover, a beautiful cover makes a book all the more enjoyable. During the next few weeks I am going to be featuring some great book cover artists. I don’t know about you, but when I try to picture what I’m reading, I find that the cover of a book often provides the color palette that my imagination uses to form the pictures. For instance, I have a very hard time reading science fiction paperbacks from the 1960s with those washed-out,...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[237,5],"tags":[248,249],"class_list":["post-488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-books","tag-book-covers","tag-isaac-asimov"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/04\/The-Foundation-Trilogy-pb.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOucj-7S","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4068,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions\/4068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}