We Know We Shouldn't, But We All Do It

…and that's the hill on which I will take my last breath.

Who was the first person to decide that we shouldn’t judge books by their covers – and how were they so utterly out of touch with how (a) humans and (b) book cover designs work?

I can honestly say, hand on heart, that I have never once in my life bought a book whose cover I didn’t at least sort of like. I would probably estimate that 80% of my book purchases are made based on, if not cover alone, then the cover at least having caught my eye, and then my being reeled in by the title and blurb. Recent examples of this include Jayne Allen’s Black Girls Must Die Exhausted, Charmaine Wilkerson’s Black Cake and Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half. (With the exception of The Vanishing Half, I have yet to actually read any of them, but that’s beside the point.)

The other 20% of my book purchases – those not made on the basis of cover alone – are a combination of book club picks and books by podcasters or writers whose Substacks I like. In this grouping we have Aubrey Gordon’s You Just Need to Lose Weight (and 19 Other Myths About Fat People), Virginia Sole-Smith’s Fat Talk and Anne Helen Petersen’s Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation.

As for book club picks, the most recent of those was Shelby Van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures, a book I bought – and read – for a “NE Indiana Moms” book club (from Facebook, of course) I didn’t end up going to.

To be fair to all involved in the design of Van Pelt’s debut novel, I would have bought it on the basis of its cover alone. Look at that stunning octopus! Those gorgeous colours!

As an aside, I was enraged when I read that Remarkably Bright Creatures was her debut novel. I hate it when people’s debut novels are this good, as if someone else’s success is taking directly from me. Frazey would not approve.

Why am I like this?! Another point to note: I have yet to write my debut novel! Maybe mine will also be incredible! I should be feeling inspired by this success, not bitter and curmudgeonly.

Anyway, Remarkably Bright Creatures was the book club pick, and I finally started reading it two days before book club was set to take place, in the library on the north side of Fort Wayne, a library I have never set foot in. (I have set foot in exactly one library in Fort Wayne, exactly once, to attend a talk by Ashley Ford, and despite joining the library a few months ago and receiving a very nicely designed membership card, I just… haven’t got around to going.)

There’s a chat that accompanies the book club, and I am an active lurker. It’s quite rare that I’ll wade in – which is out of character, obviously – but I’m there to see what’s being said, and asked, and told. The most recent patter involves a vague plan to book ourselves a night in a hotel, en masse, have dinner and drinks together and then retire to our rooms, alone, to read. (I’m into it.)

In the run-up to April’s book club, someone asked what Remarkably Bright Creatures was about. They hadn’t managed to pick it up yet, but they were next on the list for it at their local library. (They’re great for the local libraries, these book clubbers.)

“It’s about this woman whose husband and son have died,” another book clubber responded. “And she works at an aquarium. And this is going to sound weird, but half of the book is written from the point of view of the octopus.”

Before that moment, I wasn’t really sure I was going to read the book, at least not immediately. I had every intention, as I’d tell my mother, of going to the book club, but I was also nervous as I’d never met any of these women before. I’m never sure which version of myself is going to show up in new group scenarios: the confident woman who has an opinion about everything, or the (also confident) maniac who makes inappropriate jokes about everything. It’s a gamble.

But with those words, “written from the point of view of the octopus”, I knew I had to start right away.

I had a similar reaction, years ago, to a book chosen for a different book club – also a book club I didn’t end up going to, although I’m not sure if that was through my own poor decision-making or because the book club itself never happened, and though I could ask a friend who was also involved, I’m not sure I want to know the (predictable) answer.

The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell, was, I was told, “about a Jesuit priest who goes into space”. Of all the words I never expected to appear in the same sentence… As it happens, The Sparrow is among the top five books I have ever read, an incredible, sprawling tale of discovery and philosophy and space travel and love and romance, genre-defying and so incredibly thought-provoking in the most unexpected way.

Remarkably Bright Creatures is not quite as sprawling as The Sparrow – there’s no space travel, for one, and very little in the way of romance – but all the same it’s made its way into my top 10, without a doubt, despite the fact that, a few chapters in, I considered packing it in altogether.

I rarely do this with books; I pride myself on seeing them through to the end, once I’ve started. But since having Atlas, I’ve found myself a little more easily rattled. His birth exposed a fault line somewhere in my psyche so that grief, even in literature, hits that little bit harder than it ever did before.

Edel Coffey’s Breaking Point, for example, was deleted from my Kindle after the first chapter; Remarkably Bright Creatures, whose central character is still recovering from the death of her son, 30 years before, almost went the same way. I don’t know that I could read We Need to Talk About Kevin again, all these years later, although that might also be due to my newly intense dislike of Lionel Shriver. (Having read several of her books, I came to the conclusion – bolstered by her having changed her name from Margaret – that she hates women, and I simply have no time for women who hate women. There are enough men out there who hate us as it is.)

Van Pelt has written a book about grief and loss and heartbreak and pride that is simultaneously about ageing and privilege and work and, yes, octopuses (Google says this is the preferred plural), although it’s mostly about one octopus. The other octopus is just a bit player.

All of this to say: judging a book by its cover has yet to do me dirty. I’m all for it. Judge by typography, judge by beautiful design, judge by eye-catching colours. How else are we supposed to pick?!

I played that Frazey Ford song on YouTube and then YouTube did what it always does, and what I always forget it’s going to do, and went straight into another song. It chose this song, which might just be my favourite song to come out of the last… 10 years?! I don’t know, maybe I just need my catchy tunes to have meaning, y’know? (This song is a close second.)