Tag Archives: flora

Cover Love: My Favorite Book Covers of 2020

By Rebecca Foster on December 19, 2020 | 18 Comments

As I did last year, I’ve picked out some favorite book covers from the year’s new releases. In general, slap some flora and/or fauna on and I’m going to be drawn to a book. Sometimes these covers are colorful and busy; other times the layout is more stark.

Here are my favorite covers from books I’ve actually read:

Plus a few I’ve read whose covers aren’t quite like the others:

I prefer the U.S. cover (left) to the U.K. cover (right) in these four cases:

And here are covers that caught my eye even though I’ve not had a chance to read the books themselves (including USA-only releases and books my library doesn’t own):

A few even buck the flora + fauna trend, employing interesting lines, shapes or perspective instead.

If I had to narrow it down, I think these three would be my absolute favorite covers of 2020:

What cover trends have you noticed this year?

Which ones tend to grab your attention?

Posted in: Something Different | Tagged: book covers, cover love, fauna, flora, fungi

Cover Love: My Favorite Book Covers of 2019

By Rebecca Foster on December 14, 2019 | 33 Comments

I’ve picked 26 favorite book covers from 2019, most of which are on books I haven’t yet managed to read – either they’re U.S.-only releases, or my library doesn’t own a copy. In the past I have sometimes found that the most eye-catching covers and the most striking titles end up belonging to disappointing books, but at least a few have bucked that trend.

Here are my favorite covers from books I have actually read or am currently reading:

And here are the rest:

What have we learned from this exercise? That I’m a total sucker for flora and fauna on book covers, especially birds. (Bizarrely, rabbits/hares make four appearances, too.)

What cover trends have you noticed this year?

Which tend to grab your attention?

Posted in: Something Different | Tagged: birds, book covers, cover love, fauna, flora, hares, rabbits

How I Did on My 2018 Reading Goals & The Year’s Cover Trends

By Rebecca Foster on December 24, 2018 | 16 Comments

The year-end coverage continues!

So, how did I do with the 2018 reading goals I set for myself about this time last year? Rather poorly! is the short answer.

I only read one book that might be considered a travel classic (by Patrick Leigh Fermor), though I did read some modern travel books.
I only read Ali and the first half of a biography of May Sarton. What I’d envisioned being a monthly biography feature on the blog turned into a one-off.
I need to work out my literature in translation percentage and compare it to last year’s to see if I’ve improved at all.

However, I do feel that I did well at reading my own books, as boosted by my 20 Books of Summer being chosen exclusively from my own shelves. Once I’m back from America I’ll have to do another full inventory and see how many unread books are still in the house, as compared to the 327 at this time last year.

Out of my 31 most anticipated reads of the second half of the year, I read 20 (of which 5 were at least somewhat disappointing), abandoned 2, still have 2 to read, lost interest in 1, have 1 in progress, and can’t find 5. For the whole year, the statistics are at 38/61 read (13 disappointments = more than 1/3 – that’s really bad and needs to be fixed!), 7 DNF, 4 still to read, 9 not found, 2 lost interest, and 1 in progress.

As for my non-reading-related goal … my accordion-playing fell by the wayside in July because I went away to America for three weeks unexpectedly, and after that never got back into the habit of daily practice and biweekly lessons the other side of Reading. I’d still like to pick it back up in the near future. I was at a point where I knew five notes and a few bass chords and could play both hands on a number of very simple tunes.