Go Ahead and Judge a Book by its Cover

My friend, and fellow bibliophile, Kendel, recently blogged about real books vs. ebooks and it reminded me that it's about time I did a post about books. They're a small HUGE obsession of mine. I don't think I could ever own enough books. But I'm very particular about the ones I buy. While I would (probably) not buy a book purely for it's aesthetic quality, if there is more than one option, you can bet I'll buy the best looking one, regardless of price (within reason). When bookcases are such a large part of many homes and the obvious bookcase fillers are books (duh), why wouldn't you buy the best looking one?

This may be the only time you ever hear someone say Go Ahead and Judge a Book by its Cover.

A little sneak peek at SC's bookcase...

While I could never organize my books this way, by color with no regard to author or genre, it certainly creates a beautiful effect.

My books are arranged a little more methodically.

I need a bigger bookcase...
Pride & Prejudice and the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes are my two favorite, and most collected, books. I currently own at least four copies of each. (to be fair, two of the P&Ps are modern rewrites, but it still counts) All with very different covers and typefaces.

Let's take the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes for example.

I found these editions (listed with their original publication date) currently for sale on Barnes&Noble's website. After I gathered enough to prove my point, I stopped looking. There were still more options. This doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what you could find at a used bookstore or another online bookstore.

1960

1992

2003

2003 - one of the editions I own. :)

2004

2009 (released the same year as the movie starring Robert Downey Jr, clearly)

2009 - one of the other editions I own.

With this many options to choose from, why settle for an ugly book? And with so many old, used books needing homes from used book stores, why buy a new one? There's nothing I love more than $0.50 stickers on books. Heaven on earth.