Me versus Books and their Covers

The first in the Me v Clichés series - "Never judge a book by its cover".

The picture below is the cover of the book I'm currently reading*. You may judge from the title that it's a social history of darts in England between 1900 and 1939. You'd be absolutely right. It's very easy to judge this book by its cover.

Darts in England 1900-39 A social history by Patrick Chaplin

It's not an isolated incident. Many book covers now give visual clues to their contents. I might read this next.

Coming back to me - Marcus Trescothick's Autobiography

It's Marcus Trescothick's autiobiography. Did you guess?

Let's move to the kitchen? Hands up if you think this is a Nigella Lawson cookery book?

Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson

You're correct! Good judgement!

This isn't a universal rule though. Some PG Wodehouse books have drawings of posh-looking young men in animated conversation on the cover.

Very Good Jeeves by PG Wodehouse

You can't really tell that it's some of the greatest English comedy writing of all time from that image.

Other books like 17 by Bill Drummond give you no clue at all.**

17 by Bill Drummond

I think the world's moved on. Maybe in the olden days of hardbacks it was more difficult to judge a book by its cover but we live in a time of dustjackets and paperbacks. Time to consign this one to the history books. (That say 'history' on the front in big letters.)

Conclusion: This cliché is clearly outdated but could be saved by changing it to 'You can't always judge a book its cover' or 'You can't judge whether a book's going to be any good or not even though the cover gives you a pretty good idea of what it's about'.

Next time: I'll be trying not to lose on the roundabout what I've previously gained on the swings.

* It's very good but you will need to be interested in darts or social history to get full enjoyment.
** And I won't spoil it.