Judging a book by the cover


I have a confession to make: I judge books by the cover.

I can’t help myself — I trawl through dozens of bargain books several times a week, and I browse through book covers to “separate the wheat from the chaff,” so to speak, especially if I don’t recognize the book title or the author. And then when the cover captures my fancy, that’s the only time I’ll scan through the rest of the data: title, author, and the blurb.

It saves a lot of time, and the method has worked for me so far.

Another confession, and this is freakier: when I’m in a big hurry, I even judge books by the spine! I can actually spot the spines of certain book series I collect off the bat, I’ve practiced the cursory scan enough times to pick out the books I like!

And another confession — when I really like a book, I collect different covers that I like, which is how I came to amass a collection of over a hundred Harry Potter books in different languages!

Because I’m totally engrossed in reading book 3 of the Millennium trilogy, I’ll leave you with an article I wrote for Manila Bulletin Students and Campuses section this weekend. Feel free to add your thoughts on the subject in the comments section!

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Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman!


I was watching an episode of The Big Bang Theory where Leonard celebrates his birthday, and Wollowitz presents him with a signed copy of Feynman’s Lectures on Physics. By then I’d watched enough BBT episodes to know that Richard Feynman won a Nobel Prize for Physics (and is somewhat of a god to theoretical physicists), but I had a nagging feeling I’d come across that name somewhere else.

Last week, I was rooting through my shelves for a book to swap at the FFP book discussion, when I spotted a book I’d forgotten about, a copy of Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character), a semi-autobiographical collection of stories narrated by Feynman, caught on tape by his friend Ralph Leighton. I’d gotten it for about P30 at a Scholastic warehouse sale last year, and I got it mainly because the cover looked interesting and I had a bag to fill, but I had no idea what it was about.

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From one book lover to another

 

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Here’s a story that made my day.

A few months back, I had blogged about a bunch of bookmarks I found at a bargain bookstore. Among those I featured was a beautiful bookmark  featuring some unicorns prancing in the night sky. It was the only one in the tray of bookmarks that wasn’t based on an actual book, and it was smaller than the rest,but I’ve always loved unicorns and I liked the softness of the painting featured in the bookmark.

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

 

 

I’ve always wanted to read Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — I’ve actually had a copy sitting on my shelf for several months now, but for a while there was some hype about it and I wanted to wait for it to dial down a bit. And then when I was looking for a book to read this weekend, the chartreuse cover got my attention so I finally took it out of its packaging, covered it in protective plastic (of course), and started to read it.

Originally written in Swedish, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first book in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. The novel has won multiple awards, including Sweden’s Glass Key Award in 2006 for best crime novel of the year, the 2008 Boeke Prize, the 2009 Galaxy British Book Awards for Books Direct Crime Thriller of the year, and the 2009 Anthony Award for Best First Novel.

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Fables and more

Saturday was the Flips Flipping Pages Book Discussion on Bill Willingham’s Fables: Legends in Exile, led by our youngest-ever moderator, 13-year old Paolo.

I read my Fables deluxe edition back in March (I had it signed by James Jean in December) and I enjoyed it a lot, so I was looking forward to discussing it with the Flippers.

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