Favourite Book Covers

“Don’t judge a book by its cover”. A solid piece of advice in my opinion. Yet, we’ve all done just the opposite at least once. Don’t try to deny it, we’re all guilty, we’ve all judged a book by its cover and, honestly, it’s kind of what we’re expected to do. The book cover is designed to get your attention, to make you notice the book. The cover is the first impression and it’s main purpose is to be attractive and interesting enough that it makes you wanna see what the book is about.

For me, a good cover serves the book in two ways: it makes the book stand out and creates enough interest to attract a potential reader and it adds to the enjoyment of the story. This second thing is tricky and very subjective, but if a book cover shows me something about the story that somehow contributes to it, whether it’s a setting, a character, an important element, then I enjoy the book even more. Maybe I’m weird, but I’ll show you what I mean.

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This is, again in my opinion, a really good book cover. The book is called “The Last Passenger” in English. As you can tell from the title and the cover, the story takes place in a ship. For me the cover does a great job with adding to the enjoyment of the story because it shows the setting where it takes place, which already gives the reader a sense of the kind of book they’re gonna get. Something happens on that ship that it’s gonna keep you guessing. It’s a mystery, maybe with some elements of horror too. You can tell these things just by looking at the cover.

Of course, a cover can serve the purpose of showing what the book tells or it can, in some cases, just be about looking pretty and interesting to enough to sell it. The cover is a book’s presentantion card after all and ultimately the goal is to get people to buy and read the book. With this in mind, I went through my list of books on goodreads and I picked my ten favourite book covers. I considered all books, those I read and those I haven’t yet. I was surprised to discover that some of my favourite covers for books that I already read belong to those I wouldn’t necessarily call my favourite stories, but this is not about the stories, I’ll talk about that on a future post.

For now, here are my ten favourite book covers. If one or more of them catch your eye, you can click on them to go to each book’s page on Goodreads and learn more about it.

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What do you think? What are your favourite book covers?

Book Review: Broadcast by Liam Brown

Last year I was lucky enough to get Broadcast by Liam Brown on NetGalley. For those of you who don’t know what NetGalley is, it’s basically a website where different kinds of readers of influence can request books to read and review.

I mentioned this book last week as having a similar style to Funscreen. The main two things that got my attention about this book: The premise and the cover. Now I know, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but let’s face it, covers are the presentation card of the book and this one stood out. They are supposed to draw your attention to it.

The premise is captivating, Broadcast tells the story of David Callow, a man who is offered the oportunity to be the first person to try MindCast. A chip is inserted into his skull and from that point on everything he thinks, feels, sees and does is streamed live 24/7. David is a person who loves attention and has no regard for privacy, so he doesn’t think twice before accepting. His show becomes a sensational success and he is now a huge celebrity. Of course problems arise, friends are lost and as he starts to realize the issues with sharing every moment and every thought with the world, he wants to get the chip removed, but the creator of MindCast has other plans.

As I said previously, the cover stood out from the rest, probably because it’s very colourful. The details hidden behind it are appreciated once you read the book and learn how MindCast works, I won’t spoil it for you, but there’s a reason why the cover features an image that resembles a videocamera lens and has all those different colours.
This book was really interesting for me and I read it in one go. I really enjoyed reading it, the ideas in this book are great and thought provoking. It’s definitely guaranteed to stay on your mind for quite some time. The story moves at a great pace and, despite the way in which it evolves being quite predictable, there’s still some mystery to it that was enough to keep my interest all along and surprise me. I just couldn’t put this book down!

That said I do have a few issues with this book. One is that the main character is so unlikable. He’s egocentric, vain, stubborn and reckless. He only cares about himself and what he wants. He wants to be famous, so he accepts to have a chip implanted that broadcasts not only what he’s doing, but also what he’s thinking and how he feels all day, every single day. He never asks any questions. I would think a person, even a self-obsessed egomaniac would have a problem with having everything broadcast live to millions of people or even to a single person, but he shows no appreciation for privacy and has no regard for how his decisions can affect the people he interacts with, he never even considers that everything probably means people will be able to see whenever he uses the toilet. These things made it really hard for me to feel any kind of sympathy for him when things start to go wrong. However, the other issue I have with this book is that towards the end, it goes a little bit crazy. I promise I won’t spoil what happens, but I’ll say there’s a series of events that take place that felt a little off, in my opinion they didn’t really fit the tone of the rest of the book.

I gave this book 3 stars out of 5 on Goodreads, mainly because of the issues I had with some events at the end, but that rating feels a little deceiving because it is really a good book, one of the ones I enjoyed reading the most and it’s actually one of my favourites that I read last year. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes science fiction and is interested in the premise. You are definitely going to enjoy this one.

Perfect Albums: Can’t Love, Can’t Hurt

Happy Music Monday! There’s no better way to start the week than with some good music. Today I’ll share with you my thoughts on one of my favourite albums ever. It doesn’t happen often, even with our favourite band, we all have those two or three songs in an album that we don’t care much about. However, I realised there are two “perfect” albums for me. Can’t Love, Can’t Hurt by Augustana is one of them.

I discovered Augustana when I was in my last year of high school, shortly after the release of this album. The first song I heard by them was, of course, Boston, a song that I’m sure you’ve heard at least once even if you had no clue whose it was. Augustana is known as a one hit wonder in a way thanks to that song, which is not their best in my opinion, but it does reflect one of the main characteristics of the band: intensity.

Can’t Love, Can’t Hurt is an album where every song has a purpose, there are no fillers. The sound quality is really amazing, the mix is impeccable and the lyrics are pure poetry, they all have that one verse that speaks truths like a great book does. It’s a really artistic album and you can tell that a lot of careful thought went into recording this.

Hey Now is the perfect opening, it starts sweet and slowly grows, changing with every verse, adding new layers and constantly evolving until it reaches its climax at the end. Followed by I Still Ain’t Over You, a good song to keep the rythm, I particularly love the way the piano and the guitar complement each other during the verses.

The next song, Sweet And Low, was the lead single from the album. I remember Sweet And Low was a bit controversial because people couldn’t figure it out. I won’t claim to know exactly what was going through Dan’s mind when he wrote “Hold me down, sweet and low, little girl”, but that’s music. Each listener will find their own meaning to it. I really enjoy this song and my focus is on the first lines: “Anywhere you go, anyone you meet, remember that your eyes can be your enemies”.

Twenty Years is classic Augustana. It starts with just piano and voice and it evolves in a similar way to Hey Now. The lyrics take me somewhere special and I find this song is perfect to close my eyes and forget the world. It’s so easy to fall in love with this one and feel everything the story in it tells you.

Meet You There stands out from the rest. It’s a break from the intensity of the rest of the album and it sounds completely different from everything else. While this song brings back really good memories and I love it, the mix feels a bit dull to me now, it lacks some range and I only wish the drums would have more presence on this one.

Fire comes back to piano and voice. It’s raw and passionate. It’s followed by one of my favourite songs with a title that’s raw and honest: Either Way, I’ll Break Your Heart Someday. I can’t really explain why I love this song so much, I guess it’s the ugly truth of the title along with the conflicting sentiment of the lyrics.

Dust starts with vocals only and some perfect harmonies. The lyrics to this song are interesting and Dan’s interpretation gives extra meaning to every word, but the guitar takes the spotlight here and makes this song sound painfully beautiful.

Rest, Shame, Love is one of those songs I listen to from time to time when I feel like I’m losing my focus and it never fails to help me keep my feet on the ground. Listening to this song now as I write this made me appreciate it in a new way. “If you can’t love, babe, then you can’t hurt. We take the good times with the worst”. This song hits home now more than ever.

Where Love Went Wrong is a great song to finish the album. It really is the perfect closing to an album where every instrument gets a moment to shine.

This album has been one of my favourites from the first time I heard it and while I do have tracks that I listen to more often than others, I take some time to enjoy the full album every now and then and love it more and more each time. One thing you might not expect after reading this is the following curious fact: My favourite song by Augustana is not part of this record, it’s part of the self-titled album that was released after Can’t Love, Can’t Hurt. It probably deserves its own post at some point in the future.
Augustana went through many changes since this album until only Dan Layus remained. He’s now a solo artist, a really talented man who deserves more recognition.

 

Favorite books read in 2017

According to Goodreads, I read 31 books last year. It was a strange year for me in terms of reading. I didn’t enjoy the first book I chose to read, the premise was alluring, yet it failed to deliver. I was so disappointed by that book, but I didn’t want to leave it unfinished, so I kept reading, albeit really slowly. Looking back, I guess that was a mistake, it was really hard to get to the end of the book and it put me off reading for quite a while. Fortunately, after I took some time to recover and felt motivated enough to read again, I found some really amazing books later in the year.

Here I’ve picked the best three books I’ve read in 2017. I considered all the books I enjoyed reading the most and thought about the ones that stood out, the ones that really surprised me and stayed with me long after I had finished reading them. Listed in no particular order, those are:

  • Funscreen by Craig A. Falconer: The government has developed a welfare system that pays people to watch carefully selected ads on a Funscreen. Roger is unemployed and depends on this income, but there’s more to the Funscreen than meets the eye. A short story related to Sycamore. I must admit I haven’t read Sycamore yet, but when I read the description for this story, I was immediately drawn to it. Fortunately you don’t need to know anything about Sycamore to enjoy this one. I found this little story fascinating and in times when ads are everywhere, it’s not so hard to imagine something like this happening soon. I love these stories about technology developments that are close enough to things we all know and for the most part think of as harmless, but could turn on us. Another book in this style that I read last year and loved is Broadcast by Liam Brown, I’ll probably share more about this one in the future.
  • The Vanishing Year by Kate Moretti: Zoe Whittaker has a perfect life. Now. Some time ago, after her mother died, she got into doing and selling drugs for a man her mother used to date, until she went to the police. From this point on, her life was in danger. In order to survive she ran, got a new identity and started a new life, but now she realizes she can’t outrun her past. This plot sounds almost like a cliché, I’m sure you’ve heard of that kind of plot before and you’re wondering what’s so special about this book. Well, this book is different, the twists and turns will leave you guessing what comes next, you may focus on the right people, but you won’t know what’s happening until the last minute and it will surprise you. It’s not often that this type of story surprises me anymore, but this one did and it was refreshing.
  • Wintersong by S. Jae-Jones: I mentioned this book on my first post. Liesl is a girl who sacrificed the best parts of herself to help the ones she cares about shine. One day her sister, Käthe, is taken by the goblins, so Liesl sets out to rescue her. The Goblin King offers her a deal, he’ll let Käthe go only if Liesl agrees to be his wife, which means staying with him and never seeing her family again. She somewhat reluctancly agrees and, as she gets to know the unnamed Goblin King, she starts to feel things she hadn’t felt in a long time. He helps her find herself again. This story has many issues, kidnapping a girl just to blackmail her sister into marriage is just outrageous, but the characters are never presented as heroes, they never try to be something they are not. Another issue is that it takes quite some time for the reader to find out why the Goblin King needs a wife so desperately. However the way in which this book is written and the development of the story is something that really impressed me. I could relate to Liesl for personal reasons, so that probably helped me forgive some of the major problems with the story, but it was more than that. Reading this book you get the feeling that there is no real happy ending possible for the characters, but there is hope that in doing the right thing, everything will be ok.

Now that 2017 is done, it’s time to start thinking about what great books will be read in 2018. I started the year reading Lucky Man by Michael J. Fox, an actor that I love since I was a kid. I don’t think I had read any autobiographies before, so it felt like a good way to keep expanding horizons.

Feel free to leave a comment with your favourite books read in 2017 and what books you’re looking forward to reading this year.