The Clothing of Books: An Essay - Jhumpa Lahiri - ★★★.¾

AUTHOR: Jhumpa Lahiri

GENRE: Nonfiction Essay

PUBLICATION DATE: November 15, 2016

RATING: 3.75 stars.

Whenever I go book shopping, the first thing that attracts me for newer authors is the book cover. Its colour, its illustrations, its penmanship... I find it very tough to pick up a book where the cover doesn't appeal to me. For some old favourites, I always used to wonder: what made the author go for such a drab cover?

Now that I've read "The Clothing of Books" by Jhumpa Lahiri, I feel like I've been judging authors unfairly. She stunned me when she wrote that in this new age of digital publishing, the author didn't have much of a say in choosing covers. In fact, the author and cover designer don't even meet. That is an eye-opener, isn't it?

This is a beautiful little book. Actually not even a book, it's more like a non-fiction novella, hardly about 80 pages long. I would not recommend this to everyone. This would appeal to those who are intrigued to know the publishing & cover selection problems from an author's perspective, and to those who genuinely love books in their true form, i.e. not just for their story or author or the spice they add to your life but for simply being a physical book - a work of art to be treasured and relished passionately!

Does this mean that I won't judge books by their covers anymore? Not at all. But at least I won't blame authors for poor cover art.

Here's a little excerpt from this lovely little essay:

"Publishers today have overloaded covers with unreasonable expectations. They must grab and win the attention of dazed and disoriented browsers in big bookstores, who must pluck this book and only this one from overstuffed shelves or a table blanketed in volumes. All of the energy and strategy behind a book cover underlines a depressing fact: the terrifying number of books published in the world every year, and the few that are actually bought and read."