September 8, 2018

Judging a Book By Its Cover

Do you ever see a cover that is so pretty, you want to buy the book, despite a) not liking it, b) having no idea what it's about, or c) not being able to read it because it's in a different language?

I fall victim to this problem, mainly when it comes to the third reason. I collect YA books in French because I can kind of comprehend them, but there are also a bunch of YA novels I want in other languages just because the covers look so cool. And I think y'all will agree with me after I show you these covers. (I've done a post related to this but not specifically about my wishlist, so I hope you'll forgive me for repeating a topic.)

For example, look at these matching Indonesian covers for Gayle Forman books:
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And admire with me the illustrated cover for When We Collided in Portuguese:

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Part of it is a culture thing because I deeply want this Finnish edition of Heist Society:
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(I'm part-Finnish.)

But it's mostly just pretty covers:

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(Bulgarian Anna and the French Kiss and Turkish Written in the Stars)
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(Italian The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight and Romanian Eliza and Her Monsters)

It does make me sad that a lot of the #ownvoices or diverse YA I've enjoyed either don't have foreign editions, or they're not very pretty or unique (many use a variation on the original U.S. cover or go for the standard girl-in-a-dress or typography formulas).

Do you collect foreign editions of your favorite books when you can? How do you acquire them? Would you rather acquire a foreign edition for its cover or because you understand the language?

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