Judging A Book By Its Cover: The City of Dreaming Books

This is my weekly post where I choose to appreciate a book for its cover art or overall design – to me, a well-designed book is like a piece of art. We all judge book covers to some extent. Personally, it’s usually a title/cover combination that pulls me in when I’m browsing in a bookstore. I can’t say that I’ve ever decided against a book with terrible cover art if I liked the sound of the plot, but I have purchased special editions of books, or multiple editions of books based on their cover art. If book covers didn’t matter, publishers (looking at you, Penguin!) wouldn’t put out so many beautiful editions!

The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers is one of my favorite books of all time. The world of Zamonia and specifically the city of Bookholm that Moers has created is utterly fantastic, fun and engrossing. To top it all off, his books are illustrated as well! This is another book where I want to show you each illustration because they’re all fantastic. I am eagerly awaiting the third book in this Bookholm series and if I don’t at least get a release date soon, I may go insane. For those of you interested in finding out more, the paperback ISBN is 9781590201114 (I’ve also purchased this in hardcover since photographing, and yes, I’m keeping both copies!) Just writing this post makes me want to immediately re-read this book.