Books I would burn 🔥 

Nightmare scenario: spend years writing a novel, years finally getting an agent, publishing deal, finally feel so happy you could burst and then...land a shitty cover 😫

Hi Leena! 😊 Here comes a little viewer request: I would love it if you did a second video on book covers you love. ❤ Those ones that, in your opinion, perfectly embody the content of the book or even enhance it. It would make for great content! 🤩 I'll start with a young adult novel I read more than a decade ago, but whose cover still lives in my head rent-free: Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce (first edition).

I think the bodily harm one is meant be the trigger of a gun/a heart. Agree that they're all quite meh.

I am a book cover designer and it makes me so sad when a good book gets a poor cover. In my job it is frustrating when trends beat out creativity, because we are often at the whims of editors and art directors and it has to be what is presumed to sell rather than what best suits the story. This also leads to covers replicating popular covers on the genre to try and get people to pick them up. As a reader I search for fresh fun covers when looking for books to read and that often means me missing out on brilliant ugly books. I am grateful for friends and RU-vid which recommend me books so I don’t miss out on all those lovely tales, and because of my job of the book contents were good enough I will redesign the cover for the book myself once I have read it so I can enjoy it on my shelves.

The title plus the cover for the five people you meet in heaven absolutely looks like a religious pamphlet that you would take from a nice older lady not to be rude and never read

Everytime I see Lolita with a cover that Vladimir Nabokov would DESPISE they're always the exact opposite of what he wanted.

As a graphic designer and illustrator I am so glad you made a video on this! There are so many books I see at the bookstore I just sigh, because I can visualize so much more creative book covers that would better fit the story!

MAUS has an amazing cover, design wise, but reading something in public or buying it in a store would make me nervous these days due to the very LARGE swastika it has on it and I don't wanna be mistaken for a Nazi 😅😅

I’d love to see a video on book covers you love ! Or even you creating your own book covers for your favourite books with questionable book covers?

I never thought about this before, but since you mentioned briefly how different covers of female vs male authors can be. Could you talk more about the gender bias and apparent infantalization of not only female authors but also their expected readership etc? That's really infuriating to me! Great video as usual :)

The one Margaret Atwood cover with the cat made me think of Cat‘s Eye which is the only book of hers I’ve read. Seems a bit weird to me to use an image of a cat eye for another book when the author has written a book with that title

This was a great video! To add to this discussion I’d bring up Bonnie Garmus’ hatred of the US cover of her book ‘Lessons in Chemistry’. It’s a soft pink with a cartoon image of a female face. It looks like a typical romance book. She was annoyed because she felt like it wasn’t being marketed correctly. It’s meant to be a feminist book about a women who wants to pursue a scientific career and not fit into stereotypical ideas of what a mother should be. The cover was a pretty ironic choice. She rightly brought up that a man’s book would likely not be given that cover. There’s nothing wrong with reading/ writing rom-coms but that’s absolutely not what the book is.

Leena, very fun, had a great time here. Please add book binding to your reservoir of hobbies to dabble in. It’s fantastic for making well-loved paperback copies stand the test of time and it’s also just so fun. You can rebind books you already have or make yourself wee notebooks. It would also be very fun to see you figuring it out x

“Outraged” was the worst one for me personally because both the hardback and paperback look horrendous. I had absolutely no idea that was supposed to be a toilet door indicator until you said so and I have encountered them. The wolf and sheep look a like stock art from Canva and that font makes it look like a middle grade book. Yikes

There’s an alternative book cover for Pod (the Pegasus edition) which fits it soooo much better. A bright illustration of a kind of psychedelic and bright spiral in blue and purple with shadows of dolphins

Omg I thought the Motherhood cover didn’t show actual grapes, but a bunch of pills (I assumed maybe birth control pills, although obviously not looking like pills but like grapes). I’m only now noticing those are ACTUAL grapes. This bookcover is so disappointing my mind could literally not believe it and made up something better on its own.

'girly, giggles, tits and major awks moments' is the new 'live, laugh love!'

My friend and I had this conversation about My Brilliant Friend and the other books in that series because I was SHOCKED that he loved them because I had incorrectly judged the book by its cover and apparently they aren't Christian fiction

You have no idea how happy I was to click on a thumbnail about book burning to find a thoughtful, insightful and highly entertaining review of modern book design. Not that I would expect anything less than thoughtful, insightful and entertaining from you, Leena. ❤❤❤

Loved this rant 😂 Watching from France, I feel like the French publishing industry should take a page from the UK's book and start having more exciting book covers for fiction because the only two settings we have here are austere or quirky, there is no in-between. I don't read a lot of French fiction and that is definitely one of the factors. It's hard *not* to judge a book by it's cover at least a little bit

As a busy mum, I never watch videos when they come out. But there are 2 people I always remember are releasing videos that day - Hannah Witton and Leena Norms. Love your stuff!

I felt this in my soul. I read mostly in English but my mother tongue is German and romances translated into German all. look. the. same. We get some weird colour transitions, maybe some flowers but that‘s usually it. The only thing that differs betwen the books is which colour they are. And I hate that because it makes all romances look the same even though they truly aren‘t and it tells you nothing about the story 🥲

I would love to see a video on the reverse, books that disappointed due to the covers. For me the book Writers and Lovers was okay but the cover looked like such a different type of book I was let down a bit

Omg yes yes yes!!! I am very much a visual book buyer and I cannot agree more with you. Pod and the Sheila Heti books look like the discount crime/romance novels you find on the bottom shelf at Tesco for £4 or in a service station. I'd feel genuinely embarrassed to be sitting reading one of the new Sheila Heti covers on public transport or wherever - they look so tacky and lacking in substance! which is a true crime against her beautiful writing 😭 In all honesty - I bought (and loved) Motherhood solely on your recommendation - as a childfree person I would never have thought to pick up a book ostensibly about being a parent lol. I'm not crazy about the previous covers but compared to the new ones, I'd take them every time!! Also agree on the Margaret Atwood covers - they aren't as offensive as the others but they don't grab me. I'm loving the Vintage Earth series for their beautiful covers atm - I've bought a good handful without even knowing whether I'll enjoy them because I LOVE the artwork so much!

The heart on the cover of Bodily Harm looks VERY similar to the logo of a prominent online *ahem* adult toy shop 😳 if you know you know... 😂

i thrift all my atwood books!! none of the covers or sizes match but they’re quite easy to find secondhand and i love the original covers

Wondering if I picked up on this quickly because I am American (yikes), but I am pretty sure the Bodily Harm cover is meant to be the trigger of a gun and maybe the red part is supposed to look like a heart or a butt 😂

The five people we meet in heaven is actually listed on a German bookstores site as a textbook and published by a textbook publisher, so maybe the UK publishers where also going for that kind of design on purpose

I mostly read ebooks so I don't even see the cover most of the time. But when looking for a book, yes I've definitely avoided books based on the cover

Is the cover for Bodily Harm by Margaret Atwood supposed to be a gun? Those covers, especially the colouring, almost seem James Bond opening titles esq? I have to say I find the minimalism trend around books kind of boring now, it was interesting a few years ago but now it just seems kind of lazy especially when they all go for very similar colour palettes. I'd like to see some colours they don't generally use on books or just a book where the art is so genuinely beautiful it could stand on its own - Our Wives Under The Sea UK cover comes to mind which just makes the US one look lackluster in comparison.

Love the energy in this video! Just got to the part with Margaret Atwood covers, and I agreed with the Bodily Harm cover, as couldn't figure out what it's uspposed to be, but then I saw it! It's a gun, and the heart is the trigger 🤯

Bit off-topic: A) So that's the opposite but the black background, red apple cover tricked me into reading Twilight. It reminded me of Death Note and was described as the next Harry Potter. The disappointment. B) Have you stopped colour-coordinating your bookshelf? I never noticed. How is it arranged now? C) How much do the authors get to say about the covers? Are they just allowed to nod and say thank you? If so, that's a flawed system. How is the cover not part of your work of art? D) I love Murakami and Atwood.

I would add a controversial one - the long way to a small angry planet. I put off reading this book for so long because of the impression I had from the cover and when I actually read it, I was blown away. It is one of my favourite books ever and I had assumed it was a completely different genre than the cosy sci-fi it turned out to be

When you showed the cover for Outraged I did see a scale at first but then realized that it was meant to be a bathroom stall lock. The worst cover I experienced recently was one that had a picture of people that looked nothing like the description of the characters in the book.

I have been meaning to buy Motherhood and now I'm so upset I didn't before they changed to that horrible cover. Hopefully I can manage to find the old cover in store!

I would love to see examples of great covers. I really don't love a lot of covers lately but I can't wrap my words around why

tbf I bought pure colour based solely off its cover after wandering into a bookstore and loved it. I'm not sure why but it's a lot prettier in person and I'm guessing because the book is about art / life / nature / death that a slightly wilting but beautiful rose does kinda make sense

I gave one of my favourite books to a friend when I was in highschool (Cloudstreet by Tim Winton), but I could only find the TV show tie-in cover. I got out my coloured pencils and made her a dust jacket with the same cover as my copy.

Hi Leena! I think the idea behind the Bodily Harm cover is that it’s supposed to look like a handgun. The heart shape is the trigger. Personally, even with that, I still don’t like the way it looks, but I think that’s what they were going for. I don’t really get an idea of what the book is about from the cover

I watched this video and feel like I need another one about GREAT covers and what makes them good. Recently I saw the translated version of Mariana Enriquez Our share of night, and the one in spanish is soo much better and it is SO simple. Here in Argentina it is ICONIC.

For 'Outraged' I did see a toilet door (from New Zealand), so my brain went 'this must be a book about trans toilet bans in the US'

Loved this video 😂 My other 'problem' is the font and spacing. If the book has a decent or good cover but I open it and the text is unreadable, I won't buy it, and will look for another edition. 😂

Those Sheila Heti covers do look like self help books. I'd have skipped over them in the bookstore but if I saw the old covers in the store I'd pick them up!

Wow! That's exactly why I never read The Five People You Meet In Heaven. I couldn't believe people loved it because of what the cover suggested to me. I'll have to read it now!

I typically love Noma Bar's work (Who did the Atwood covers), however he is a very 'one-trick' designer who uses negative space to tie together two or more pieces of imagery. I think when given an entire body of work to come up with cohesive covers, some of it is bound to feel more forced than the first. I would encourage people to look at some more of his work however! :) Oh and the Bodily Harm cover is a gun trigger as Shilly BIlly has mentioned below.

Fully agree on the Atwood covers - I think the colour palettes + font combos read as "default settings" and the illustrations themselves are shallow and unengaging. I have not read Atwood and this did not incline me. My personal fury here are the two first Abarat books. Clive Barker is a painted and the paintings came before the novel here and so the original hardcovers also have the paintings... or rather cropped versions of the portrait paintings for a series that is all about immersion and atmosphere. It is just absolute garbage which is just tragic when the paintings are stunning and the hardbacks include full colour prints of them. At least the paperbacks allow the images to take up the space they need. The His Dark Materials series also have shit covers but thankfully the Everyman's Library edition is beautiful. It is, however, an edition that would not ever be read by a child. I will also say that after all these years I still ADORE the Swedish Harry Potter hardback covers by Alvaro Tapia. Some of my absolute favourite fantasy illustration work of all time.

Hi Leena, I've just read through all the comments and I would like to add my vote to you doing a video about book covers you love.

Yessss I absolutely agree! I've been thinking about this a lot, especially because I'm a french native speaker so I read books in french for most of my life. When I started reading books in english, I was shocked at the way they look, it's strange how different most of the covers are depending on the language. Books in english are always much more colourful and have lots of shapes, just for the sake of having shapes (..? which I don't undertsand either). I have to say that, because of this, I've been leaning to books in french that have more subtle or more "sober" (I don't know if it's the right word) covers.

"Book covers when I see them, that looks flammable". So many comedic gold nuggets in this one Leena.

The UK paperback cover of A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers is outrageous!!! Specially if you compare it to the US cover 😭😭😭

I love the US cover of pure colour! The uk covers seems to be an extension of the general trend of making boos pink and green , girly and aesthetic

Definitely feel your sorrow! I've been toying with learning how to make covers and make my own haha In the meantime, I just got used to buying the ebook when the cover is ugly so at least I don't have to see it much 😅

I have a huge problem with film tie-in covers.

let's make "shenan" happen

Absolutely love this video. Too many books are let down by publishers who just don't seem to give a shit. I'll be looking up Girl Meets Boy, that sounds fantastic

I so do hope the answer will be "none". Greetings from Germany where we have quite a history of burning books.

Excellent rant! I loved the passion, and now have got a new list of books to read.

I had a viceral reaction to the margaret atwood ones. I feel like that minimalist style is so hard to pull off in a pleasing way..

I love all of Taylor Jenkins-Reid's books and hate all the covers with equal passion

THANK YOU! YES!! So Much THIS! I'm in the States, deal with books all the time, for YEARS and I've been tortured by this! Over here it seems like 10 or 12 years ago all the big publishing houses said "New Book Covers should be all text arranged on an iPhone App. Carry On!" But then we comfort ourselves that at least we don't have "Bad British Covers." News Flash- WE DO! At first we thought it was not wanting to pay artists, now I think it's gone beyond that to not wanting to pay Graphic Designers. As if all of Random House has 2 Graphic designers pumping out a thousand covers a month & they just "let one go. . . " Self parody is the quickest route to completion and there is some art school graduate tied to a desk & clicking like a zombie 24/7 till they fall & are replaced by the next. These authors deserve better.

You should collaborate with artists to redesign the book covers to try and give them justice. 😊

I totally get this. I am mildly obsessed with book covers. I can not read a classic which has photos of a screen adaptation. Or even worse, random people in period dress. Also texture. The feel of a book is important. I took ages deciding which version of Middlemarch to buy. I saw outraged in an Indie bookshop and bought it from the blurb. The sheep/wolf thing didn’t worry me.

i would love a video on bookcovers you do really like and why! Totally felt you on this one but was wondering about how to do it well in your opinion

I'm so sorry about the Sheila Heti books, those covers are U-G-L-Y and I would never pick them up on my own.

in germany we were taught, books are never to be burned, i find it a bit of an odd phrasing giving the history of the practice.

I've found that I usually prefer UK covers to American ones, but these are rough. That being said, I went on a trip to Sweden recently and went to like 6 different bookstores to find the UK cover of one of my favourite books (Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason) because I couldn't stand the art on the American one and I'm so glad I found it.

On the topic of Margaret Atwood, she spoke once about the German cover for her novel The Robber Bride featuring the protagonist with, as she puts it, "gravitationally impossible front protuberances". Lots of disappointed men picking up the book thinking it is one thing and it turns out to be completely different. She also speaks about the drugstore paperbacks of the 50s which featured scantily clad women and/or leering men. And while I'm at it, Old Babes in the Wood is fantastic and definitely worth reading asap. Some of the best fiction I've read. Though I don't like the cover very much, what's inside is precious.

My first thought with the Bodily Harm cover was a heart-shaped gun trigger... no?

My bugbear is Exhalation by Ted Chiang - the hardcover and initial paperback are lovely and do a good job of communicating the book's vibe - but there's some later paperbook edition that is by far the most common now with the anatomy of a lung filled with birds and gears. I'm truly convinced the artist just knew it was a sci-fi book and looked up exhalation in the dictionary. My heart breaks every time I see it because about a year ago I had the initial paperback in my hand and decided to wait to buy until I'd finished listening to my library copy to buy it, and I haven't been able to buy since.

Outraged is on my TBR cause of one of your previous best of the year vids, and you're so right, no chance I'd have taken an interest if I'd just seen either of those covers in a bookshop. I passed The Five People... on to my auntie at Xmas time and now wondering if she's not read it yet because they cover is putting her off! 😅

I so agree, breaks my heart! Books deserve to be beautiful! Leena, would love to see a 2023 30 books you wouldn't give up if you've made changes since?

Oof yeeeeeessss. My favorite series of all time is the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede, a funny, feminist middle grade fantasy series. The first, hardback editions has art that *perfectly* encapsulates the vibe of the series. Then pretty much every iteration after that goes downhill, but the most recent iterations are unforgivable.

I found that every time I traveled to uk i was amazed by book covers compared to polish ones I saw in warsaw

I love the five people you meet in heaven! I have the completely red cover (it might just be the book without the jacket). It was one of the books that got me into reading when I was in high school. I tend towards fantasy, but I still love it

Great video! It's not even about a cover being pretty or not, just finding the right audience! ❤ I genuinely thought We Hunt the Flame was an 80s fantasy novel inspired by the middle east, when it is an actual modern book written by a Muslim woman! How to Lose the Time War I walked right past as I thought it was more literary fiction, when it was Scifi all along!?? ie my jam. Stunning cover though. Covers matter so much! And it needs to at least signal genre 😂 I have a book cloth thingy for when I hate a cover too much but own the book and want to read it.

Is the bodily harm cover a gun trigger? I think?

I was a bookish kid, but life got in the way and I only read 1 book every 5 yrs... your channel inspired me to start again, esp this video made me jump back into reading and in the past month Ive read 3 books already and Im currently reading Ali Smith :) and the others are reserved at my local library. Thank you for reigniting the joy of readin :)

You don’t need to apologise for this argument, book illustration is an entire design category and you’re right to flag these up

Saw a toilet door after you'd had it up in the shot for a wee bit, not convinced I would have seen it as that if I'd just been browsing past it in a bookshop

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig is a genius work of poetry, linguistics & psychology, and very _adult_ in the best possible way, but both the title & the cover give off 'sad goth teen' vibes which I think might deter a lot of people. Actually I would love to see you review this book Leena, I _really_ think it's your jam !

these books won't be suffering from low sales any time soon, but i still wanted to rant... 1) every damn high fantasy book thats mostly-white-with-a-pop-of-color-probably-red? stop!!! 2) the most recent neil gaiman covers... man. i can guess that they probably did it to get neil gaiman on shelves and get more sales, but the already existing covers are lovely! what is with the watercolor?? especially since they (imo) do Not match the (most often dark and whimsy) settings of the novels!

Yes yes yes! I love cover art and do definitely judge books by covers, but dont want to miss out on gorgeous books!

Currently watching, did you list the year of publication for the editions? Would help me to evaluate the Graphic Design mishap personally. Haven’t read the video description yet.

I do hate when they redo all the book covers for an author based on one success. Like with John Green after TFIOS and they took away all the pictures from the covers

The white and orange "station Eleven" cover with the deer makes me so sad 😔

I agree with you on these covers. I particularly hate Pod. It’s a mass market cover for a literary title.

Oh gosh, polish cover for „How to Do Nothing” by Jenny Odell - buttery yellow with dark blue feather looks like a self-Help book, if not sth worse. And it’s really not recognized in Poland at all

Five People is on my shelf right now, I'm deciding between reading that next or some others. I have another cover but I feel the same way. The book looks antiquated. I can't think of a cover I feel this way about but I'm sure I'll keep mental notes now.

As a graphic designer, I feel kinda angry not because you criticize the covers, but because I know how little control the creative folk usually have over an outcome as influential as a book cover. Yes, the designer doesn't always read the book (though it would be benefical, we should, but the amount of time spent on this kind of research will not be reflected in the pay :D), but the worse part is conforming to what publishers expect will sell... I am actually glad you are angry about this, that you care. People are much smarter and weirder in taste than marketing teams give us credit for! :D I think we can handle complicated, provocative book covers.

As a Graphic Designer in training, I am listening

i wouldn't pick up any of these books based on their covers. the 'pure colour' cover made me sad because the (older?) green blob cover version is actually super nice. i would love a good/intriguing cover video as a companion to this one!

Fun fact: I looked up some of the books on Goodreads and almost half of them came up in the search with different covers. Also as someone who's read great many maths textbooks I could assure you "five people you meet in heaven" doesn't look like one, at least not like a maths-maths book, maybe like a popular science book on geometry or engineering...

Hi, I've been a big fan of your channel for ages and I love this video like all the others. I also understand that it is part of the RU-vid culture to choose a clickbaity title to make videos perform better. I hope that it will therefore not be perceived as mean-spirited but as constructive if I nevertheless note that the choice of this video’s title and the association with book burning doesn’t sit right with me. Perhaps it is because, as a German, I am particularly sensitive to certain topics related to the history of my own country. But I find it difficult to repackage terms like book burning in a light, entertaining RU-vid rant, considering the historical as well as the current political context. This is of course just my silly little opinion and I understand that many might find it a bit dramatic. But I think terminology and the way it is used is important even in fun book tube videos.

What really gets me is when my books in a series end up with different cover runs... I had the black background Mockingjay cover and og thg and catching fire for SO LONG and it annoyed me SO BADLY until I found a pristine og Mockingjay in the op shop the other week! That bad boy came home with me so quickly

Movie/TV show covers are one of the worst things capitalism has ever produced. (This is a hyperbole, if it's not clear)

Leena this video was so fun and funny. I loved the ranty vibes. God bless.

The “bodily harm” cover is a gun trigger in form of a heart. Maybe the message is “love kills”?

I think I picked up Girl Meets Boy at a local shop because it was in the very cheap / pay what you can basket. I absolutely loved this book but I would agree, the cover is doing it no favours. Not sure I would have noticed had it been on the regular shelf. Unrelated but, this was also the first book I came across that didn't use quotation marks which I had to wrap my brain around :P

Very curious about your take on US vs UK covers. I know a lot of the US reviewers I see strongly feel the UK covers are almost always better (Mistborn is a classic example).

Thank you for talking about these books - some went immediately to my tbr, and they really wouldn't have based on the cover (apart from the girl meets boy one - that bird is cute 😂😂😂)