Judging a Book by its Cover

Hey everyone, so I'm sure at some point in your life you have been told 'Don't judge a book by its cover', which if you are an avid reader of this generations work you will know that it is absolute crap. Maybe you disagree with me. Oh well, you're in denial.
The other day I was at the bookstore with my roommate trying to find a good book to read. Now I was trying to find an exciting book that would get me back into the swing of reading since I haven't done it in a while so I start looking for the most eye catching cover. When I find one that looks catchy enough I read the description on it only to put it back on the shelf again. Why the hell did I pick that book, it wasn't even good?! 
I'll tell you why! The cover looked damn fine! In todays world of buying books from a store you are not given blank covered books with the title on it and a description, you are given flashy covers that draw in your eye so that you will pick it up and increase your chances of buying it. That is judging a book by its cover.
Now sometimes I find this works well. I have found many great books based on the beauty of their covers like Splintered, World War Z, and my recent purchase of the Hobbit gift edition just because it looked cool.
When you think of how you want your amazing bookshelf to look how do you imagine it? You surely want it to look full, so you go through the trouble of buying up all the books you can read to fill it to show off how much you love to read. Whatever. But at the same time you want it to look cool when other people and yourself look at it. So when you go to buy a book you instantly are drawn to the one that looks the flashiest, to coolest, and the brightest and most promising. Those will surely look the best on your shelf!
Now something my library tried was what is called 'blind date with a book' which goes against what most people think they need to find a book they love. You don't know the title, you don't know the genre, author, what it looks like or how big it is. All you will find is a nicely wrapped book in a plain paper wrapping. This way when you chose the book you chose it based on, what we did, the first sentence in the book. That's all you get. 
Another way people could stop you from 'judging a book by its cover' is by putting only the title on the books cover along with the author as they used to do in the old days. Now publishers know that people are going to be buying up the flashy books sometimes not even based on what is in them. It is all about the marketing.
Now I'm not saying it is bad to judge a book by its cover, at least not when it comes to physically reading, in fact sometimes that is the only way to do it. Our minds automatically assume that because a title is flashy, it is by a good publisher, and therefor a good author. While this is sometimes the case, it also can prove that the person publishing the book though it high enough to take the time to make it look good. 
And at the same time many books with flashy covers aren't that good. It is up to you to look past the cover, as with many things in life, and find out what it is really about. Maybe you will like what you see, and maybe you won't. That's entirely your decision to make when you buy it off the shelf.
So that's all for my surprise midweek post. I hope you guys enjoy it.
See you later and enjoy your day!
- K

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