Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge discussion
2018 Read Harder Challenge
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Task #20: A book with a cover you hate
It Devours! has a hideous bright yellow cover, with an unsettling round "mouth" with several rows of triangle teeth, which slightly triggers my trypophobia...Perfect for this category.
I'm currently reading
. I hate the cover. It's yellow, and blocky, and ugly.
My son walked into the room while I was reading
and said, "wow, that is ugliest book cover I have ever seen!" so I have my book!
Elizabeth wrote: "I look forward to seeing everyone's hated covers! Mine is Gabi, a Girl in Pieces 
."This cover was so odd. I liked the book, though.
Theresa wrote: "I'm probably going to go with 
. I really don't like that cover!"Love the cover, actually, but DNF'ed the book.
Supposedly amazing, but terrible cover design.
Shar wrote: "I'm going with Ursula Le Guin's Left Hand Of Darkness. The 7/1/2000 edition has an iceberg on the cover. Friends have recommended it to me, but looking at the cover is definitely a turn off."I'm reading this for genre fiction sci fi!
Besides doing Read Harder, I am working on books on my 100 Essential Novels scratch off poster that my mom got me last year. One of the books is Neuromancer by William Gibson and I think all of the covers I've seen of that book are ugly, so I'm going to read that.
Kacy wrote: "I'm currently reading . I hate the cover. It's yellow, and blocky, and ugly."I LOVE this cover!!! Such a great book, too, btw!! :)
Rebecca wrote: "Besides doing Read Harder, I am working on books on my 100 Essential Novels scratch off poster that my mom got me last year..."I looked this up, and it is so cool! I might have to get it and the 100 Essential films one, too!
Jd wrote: "
A Little LifeI've always hated this cover, but not sure I want to read the book."
This challenge is so much fun! Seeing what others dislike. I really liked this cover - I find the pictured man so beuatiful and vulnarable looking (and I loooooooved the book, btw! I hope you do to!).
Eldrid wrote: "I LOVE this cover!!! Such a great book, too, btw!! :)"
It is interesting to see that others hate covers I love and vice versa. I'm really enjoying the book. I should be finished with it in a few days.
Book covers do influence what I read and do not. I can be superficial that way.
I'm thinking about reading this. Ugly cover, don't you think? I read the first few pages and it actually seems like a good book.
I took my son (7 years old) to the library yesterday and went searching in the crime-department. I generally don't like the covers on crime novels (and I don't read many of them), but they are usually a quick and entertaining read, which was why I opted for one of those. I can easily read a book with a terrible cover if I know that it is supposed to be good, but picking out a book solely on the fact that I don't like the cover - that's a tough one!I ended up picking up
- the Danish edition of Dark Places. I think the cover is ugly as Hell, but I found Gone Girl pretty entertaining (even tough I figured out the plot twists pretty early on). My son agreed with me on the cover being terrible :)
So far it seems fine.
I just picked up Affinity by Sarah Waters from the library, and the cover I wound up with aggravates me so I think I have a winner. It doesn't seem like it has anything to do with the book itself, the model's posture is so awkward, and the mixture of fonts + the color of the font (which is so muted it doesn't really blend well) is just blah.
I had been planning on a weird self-published book about cults, but now it looks like Michael Wolff has made it so easy.Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. I mean, what's not to hate about this cover, and I know I'm gonna read it.
As a kid my dad was a high school teacher and would sometimes bring home books. Once he brought home Things Fall Apart and I stole it from him as a teenager because the cover attracted me. However, after further examination it sort of terrified me and I never read the book, it just sat on my shelf. Welp. Guess I know what I'm reading
I came here looking for ideas, because I can’t think of any books whose covers I HATE (other than something offensive like Ann Colter, and lets get real there aren’t enough dollars in the bank to bribe me to pick that up.)Looking upthread, I’ve always kind of disliked the cover of Bossypants too:
(Those giant, hairy arms just disturb me....)
And it being a celebrity memoir is the icing on the cake, as I so rarely read those.
Rebecca wrote: "I had been planning on a weird self-published book about cults, but now it looks like Michael Wolff has made it so easy.Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. I mean, what's n..."That's a no brainer IMHO.
Rebecca wrote: I had been planning on a weird self-published book about cults, but now it looks like Michael Wolff has made it so easy.Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. I mean, what's not to hate about this cover, and I know I'm gonna read it.
I didn't think I'd have the stomach for it, but he's having such an amazing meltdown over it that I bought a copy. Although it'll probably be a "Wake me when it's over" type of read.
So, later this year maybe :)
This one is hard for me because I don't really hate any of the book covers I've seen listed. Even on that Goodreads list of ugly books, none of them really stood out to me as "wow, bad!" I'm just kind of indifferent to them. How do you pick a book with a cover you hate if you don't care about bad covers?
A book that I've been interested in but hate the cover for is Redemption in Indigo. The cover is probably a factor in my not having read it yet, despite coming across it on lists of recommendations fairly frequently. I'm not even sure why I hate this one as much as I do, but every time I see it on my TBR list, I just think "ugh."
I knew I had found my book when I saw this. Romance novels with naked torsos in the cover make me squirm and I found this exceptionally tacky. The book itself sounds interesting enough and luckily the kindle version was free on Amazon last week. 
The BeautyThe Beauty by Aliya Whiteley..., both of the covers I’ve seen creep me out! I’m hoping the book is good though!
Jessica wrote: "This one is hard for me because I don't really hate any of the book covers I've seen listed. Even on that Goodreads list of ugly books, none of them really stood out to me as "wow, bad!" I'm just kind of indifferent to them. How do you pick a book with a cover you hate if you don't care about bad covers?"I have the same issue. I've been consciously looking at the covers of books I'm reading and pushing myself to have an opinion on the design. But generally, I come to love/hate the cover based on how much I loved/hated the book. If that's the case for you, I guess you could wait until you come across a book you hate, and then that will be your cover.
Or: do you have a phobia? Spiders, snakes, rats? You could read something with that on the cover. Or a book with a dumb title you hate.
As I mentioned above, my love/hate of a cover is usually based on my love/hate of the book. But I've been studying covers more for this task. I'm going with:
The way the profile of the butler is sliced up makes him look like he as cartoonishly long ape-arms and stubby feet. Distracting.
Am wrote: "I might go with 
for this task."Oh wow... that is ghastly.
I just sort of like how puzzled this task makes me feel. I can’t immediately think of one the way I could for “a book with a cover I love”. If all else fails we could go with “a book with a cover that I’m indifferent about until I see another country’s edition, which is decidedly superior”.
Shelley wrote: I just sort of like how puzzled this task makes me feel. I can’t immediately think of one the way I could for “a book with a cover I love”. If all else fails we could go with “a book with a cover that I’m indifferent about until I see another country’s edition, which is decidedly superior”. Yes! 2019 challenge?
Marie wrote: "Jessica wrote: "This one is hard for me because I don't really hate any of the book covers I've seen listed. Even on that Goodreads list of ugly books, none of them really stood out to me as "wow, ..."I found my book! Split Second It's one that was recommended in a group of fans of another books series, and I snagged it in Audible when it was on sale. At the time I commented that the cover was kind of dumb, because the big NYT BEST SELLER and title take up like 80% of the cover, which just looks kind of tacky to me. I was scrolling through my Audible books yesterday and saw this one and decided this would be my "Cover I hate" book, even though I don't hate it so much as think it's just kind of bad.
Rainey wrote: "Carmen wrote: "Marie wrote: "Have you heard that the cover for A Little Life is a picture of a man's face during sexual climax? Don't know if that makes it better..."Oh dang.....now I have to read this and I've been putting it off because of the cover......
I've heard A Little Life is misery for 700+ pages. In other words, it's not a book full of climaxes.
Maybe it's finally time to read
- I've never read it, and almost all of the covers are hideous.This cover of They Beauty Myth is another cover I've never liked:
Vanessa wrote: "I've heard A Little Life is misery for 700+ pages. In other words, it's not a book full of climaxes."OMG LOL :-)
I was going to read Rex Stout's "Too Many Cooks" for classic genre, but the edition I have from the 1950s (gutted I can't share this gem) features a skull wearing an extra tall chef's hat. And the skull is in a saucepan!The publisher has also added the words "diabolical menu for murder" - no doubt in case you can't tell it's a crime novel featuring a murdered chef. Because the skull in the chef's hat isn't enough of a clue!
About "Fire and Fury" - there's a great alternate cover that a designer whipped up on Twitter. https://twitter.com/edelstudio/status...SO MUCH BETTER, right?
I tend to hate all self-published covers, so I'll probably go with one of those.
I haaaaaaate this cover and got the book for Christmas, so this task was absurdly easy for me to choose:
The Dinner is such an ugly cover. It makes me think of poop. I'm reading it for the PopSugar Advanced Category "A Book tied to your ancestry". I am dreading carrying the book around though since that means I will have to look at the cover for a week.
Allison wrote: "Supposedly amazing, but terrible cover design. "I've wanted to read that for a while now so I think I might choose that book for this task!
Sophie wrote: "About "Fire and Fury" - there's a great alternate cover that a designer whipped up on Twitter. https://twitter.com/edelstudio/status...SO MUCH BETTER, right?
I tend to hate all ..."
Yes much better. I chose this book for this task as well. The chosen cover is to quote the author of the alternative cover is "a disaster." I finished reading it this morning.
I found this list, which helped me pick my book for this category: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/5...
I don't agree with all of the options on this list, but I do think
has a very blah cover and it's on my TBR.
Alanya wrote: I don't agree with all of the options on this list, but I do think Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles, #1) by Anne Rice has a very blah cover and it's on my TBR. Absolutely the best place to start and end the Vampire Chronicles. This was the only book I liked, although I guess a lot of people like The Vampire Lestat. Whatever you do, do NOT read beyond book #3.
I’m reading Just After Sunset by Stephen King, the cover literally makes me nauseous (it’s the fuzzy letters that appear to swim and give me motion sickness)
Cheryl wrote: "Hate feels too strong an emotion for book covers. I've seen a lot of bad/ugly ones on self-published books, and old science fiction and fantasy. But hate, no. The closest I can come to, so far, are..."1/18/18....Ok, so it might be down to these two
or
...Both for the blah cover, and one speaks for itself...haha
I'm picking The Perks of Being a WallflowerThe combination of the neon color and the tiny picture of feet has always bothered me. UGH.
I really wanted to use a book already on my TBR, but I find that I must be a very shallow person because most of my books are lovely and I can`t hate their covers at all!But, I have had
laying around for ages, and I am just not keen on this art style AT ALL, so I am hoping that this qualifies...
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Neil Gaiman (other topics)Mary Anne Mohanraj (other topics)
Jeff Lemire (other topics)
Michael Wolff (other topics)
Ian Morgan Cron (other topics)
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