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Everybody does it.
Given Context is my way to blog about the books I read and how they fit into the larger context of my life. Sometimes there is an uncanny connection with something in a book and something in my life. Other times it is not that straightforward. Today I want to talk about judging a book by its cover.
This post is over a year in the making. Last year one of my book clubs decided to try judging a book by its cover. It was a great idea from our leader to pair a beautiful book with beautiful bottles of wine and see how things turned out. We voted on which book to read based solely on which one we thought was beautiful. No googling. No reading reviews. Just look at these covers and pick the most beautiful.
And the winner is…
So we read The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco. If you want me to think your book cover is beautiful, just throw on some gold filigree. #SOLD! Other book club members agreed, and this was our selection. The book is about a young witch who is able to raise the dead.
The verdict?
Per usual with our group, not everyone read the book, but those of us who did read it were not as impressed with the story as we were with the beautiful cover. The briefness of my summary above might be an indication of how memorable this book was for me. This is the first book in a series and there was one thing that I was curious to find out about, but now I can’t remember what that was. I doubt I will be adding the subsequent books to my TBR.
Most people in the book club were much bigger fans of the beautiful bottles of wine. I personally don’t like wine, so that was not a big hit with me either, but I can appreciate the beautiful labels, especially if there is gold filigree involved. As far as the book goes, we felt like this one supported the old adage that judging one by its cover doesn’t work. The cover was beautiful, the story not so much.
What about UGLY books?
This year we tried an alternative take on judging a book by its cover. I do not envy our leader doing research to find these ugly books, but there were some doozies. I am not sure if having the ugliest book cover really makes this one the “winner”… but the book cover selected as ugliest was this one:
Does the theory hold?
The verdict from those who read this book was that you CAN judge this book by its disconcerting cover. You can read my Goodreads review here. Spoiler alert! I gave this book ONE star. I am usually very generous with my stars. In the years that I have been using Goodreads, there is only one other book that I have given one single, solitary star. There are some people who have given this book five stars. My suspicion is that Mr. Woodhead paid them or they are related, but there also appears to be a rewrite of this book. I will not be checking out the rewrite. But I think he did get a less ugly cover for that one.
What does this mean?
Does this mean pretty books can be less than perfect and ugly books are all going to be terrible? It is probably not fair to extrapolate the results for these two books to all others. However, I think there may be some correlation that says a well-written book will have a well-chosen cover. Perhaps it is even more likely that the opposite is true: a poorly written book will potentially have a whacked-out cover.
As you know, the saying about judging a book by it’s cover is not usually referring to books and covers. We often use it in regards to judging people. We know we shouldn’t judge them based on appearances, but it happens. As I said at the beginning, everybody does it.
Given Context
How this has been coming up in my life recently is that my Bright Line Eating tribe has been doing a big launch of the boot camp. I am very active in the community and I share my story publicly on social media, so this has been at the top of my mind. As I shared in my previous post, I have lost 100 lbs on this program. Did people judge me differently at a heavier weight? The short answer is YES.
When discussing the program with a friend, she told me that she is very happy in her life right now, and she doesn’t feel like her outside reflects the happiness that she feels inside. This made me sad, because I could empathize with her concern that people would judge the state of her happiness based on her appearance. Those people would judge incorrectly and miss out on sharing her joy.
I can relate to this from my personal experience. The BLE tag line is “Happy, Thin, and Free.” I mentioned this to my husband one day and he pointed out that I was always a happy person. Am I happier now? Yes. Especially since I found relief from the back pain that continued to plague me well into my journey. Now I am Happier, Thinner, and Pain-Free! What did people assume about me when I was at that heavier weight? How did they judge this well-written book when it was displayed with a cover that didn’t match?
Oh, Bother
As I have come down the scale, I feel that people treat me differently. This bothers me. A lot. I am willing to take some responsibility for this. Did I put off a “don’t talk to me” vibe before? Was I grumpy because of my pain and because of the highs and lows of what sugar was doing to my brain? There is probably something to that. However, it really seems like some people see me as a completely different person.
These are mostly people who don’t know me well. Maybe they didn’t know me at all before but they treat me like someone they are willing to know now. This can be triggering. It might seem odd to say that someone being nice to me can be a trigger. Of course, I want people to be nice to me. But I wanted them to be nice to me then, too.
The journey continues…
It’s hard to write about this sort of thing when I am still in the middle of it. My figurative book (or more literally, my figure) is still in the rewrite process. I feel great. I am happy. I am at peace. I won’t ever be in a static body that doesn’t move or change. I am not a statue. I am a living, breathing woman who will grow in some ways and shrink in others. I will get older, and I will have my childlike moments. At the end of my days, when the book cover is stripped away and returned to the publisher (hopefully not due to lack of sales,) I hope those who are present to judge my book will say it has been well-written.
How did none of us manage to comment on the fact that this guy’s last name is “Woodhead”.
*giggles endlessly*
How did that happen? Epic Fail on our part. I can’t wait to do next years book cover and I hope I can find some really funny ones.
HAHA! Wow, even with the wine we failed miserably!