A Book and Its Cover

Should You Judge This Book by Its Cover? is the title of philosopher Julian Baggini’s examination of one hundred familiar sayings and quotations designed to have his readers consider the universal truth or limitations of those sayings and quotations. 

The saying generally expressed as “You can’t judge a book by its cover” is intended to warn us that appearances can be deceiving, such as a wolf in sheep’s clothing (an example Baggini doesn’t use). Baggini sums up the essay thus: “we can only judge anything or anyone on what it is possible to observe, and if we look long and hard enough, such judgements are as reliable as any.”

Leaving aside sheep, or disguised wolves, and focusing solely on written material, Ed Simon at https://lithub.com/its-ok-to-judge-a-book-by-its-cover-its-impossible-not-to/ claims that “It’s Ok to Judge a Book By Its Cover (It’s Impossible Not To).” Certainly, the effort publishers go through to find the right dressing for their wares shows their hope for immediate attractiveness to prospective readers/buyers. 

“Not only is ‘never judge a book by its cover’ a cliché,” Simon writes, “it is one that lacks seriousness. To pretend that a cover is merely incidental is to ignore how much of literature is extraliterary, as if consciousness can be easily disentangled from the body.” 

Simon goes on to discuss some famous cover designs and notes that “[s]o iconic are some cover designs that even decades later they’re inextricable from how we interpret a book.”

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Agatha Christie is, of course, one of the best-selling authors of all time. Individual works of hers have appeared in many English language editions and many translations. Each publisher of her novels has ventured to find covers that will both represent the texts and attract the eye of a bookstore browser. Below are the many covers of one Christie Hercule Poirot mystery, The Murder on the Links, first published in 1923. Which of them would move you to want to read the book (and solve the mystery)? 

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Note 1: The last cover was used for multiple foreign editions, from Hawaiian to Esperanto; here is the Somali edition.

Note 2: I omitted Kindle editions and editions containing other Christie stories.