I recently reordered my bookshelves by colour because honestly I was getting a little bored of the alphabet and so many of them are such brilliant shades. It took longer than expected (because, unlike with the alphabet, I didn’t know how many colours I needed to account for), and I ended up with at least fifty shades of black (hehehe). Aside from the darkest dark (of which I ended up with two shelves full) some interesting trends emerged from this exercise.

Now, I thought, seeing as how orange is my favourite colour, that a great deal of covers I own would be of a similar shade. Nothing weird, I just have a natural disposition to pick up orange books! However, what I ended up with surprised me:

I do have maybe an unusual amount of orange-red books (21), but not more than half a shelf’s worth. No no! The majority of my books are actually either black (see above)(41) or blue (26). Even though blue is far from my favourite colour, I must confess to enjoying a great deal of books from within this category of cover.
So what is up?! Here’s what I think: 2012 was the year of the blue cover. Observe.

 

 



I mean, there were plenty of other books of other colours published last year, but whenever I browse a list I am overwhelmed by the gorgeous covers that have blue in them! I happen to have loved the books of 2012, so this is not particularly a problem for me or anything but I do find it interesting. Black is always an overwhelming theme in YA covers, I would argue, due to the Twilight-effect (a minimalistic cover all in black besides from a single line of wonderful colour storms the charts?)(it makes sense to me that you see a great number of dark covers in YA). But what is this new theme? Who started it? I like it a lot! Colour is wonderful.

So what’s going to happen in 2013 with our covers? Hahahah. I have no clue. Looking at this list and just guessing it looks like more blue in the east, with pink sweeping across in light showers from the north. In some areas there’s been a red cover warning issued too, so hold onto your umbrella and look out for that!

What’s your favourite cover of 2012? Liking the blue?

0 Comments

  • Carole Anne Carr
    January 7, 2013

    I had to smile, they say 'never judge a book by its cover', don't they. I was interested in the fact that the shelf is bowing. I have book cases upstairs that haven't dipped but under the weight of the books I found the skirting board was coming away from the wall. So just in time the book cases were taken downstairs, they were coming through the floor! :0)

    Reply
  • Su Wilcox
    January 7, 2013

    I do love blue! I may have to try organising my shelves by colour. And I sympathise with your bowing shelves; mine do the same and it's causing me some distress.

    Reply
  • Neurotic Workaholic
    January 8, 2013

    I like the Onyx and Poseidon covers best. I think covers are very important, because they're typically the first thing to catch my eye when I'm browsing in a bookstore. I like blue covers too, but I especially like covers that have people on them. It helps me picture what the characters are like.

    Reply
  • penandpaints
    January 8, 2013

    That's very interesting, I love the orange shades on your shelf, very warm and inviting!
    Blue isn't my favourite colour either, but they are all attractive book covers. I must confess to being drawn to books that are predominantly black but with bright red/orange featuring in them, especially with YA novels. With grown up girly stories, I like those to be pastel shades. Hehe, sorry to ramble.

    Reply
  • erica and christy
    January 9, 2013

    I must say, I do judge a book by its color. I think over the years I have found that I am partial to mustardy colored books. <3 christy

    Reply
  • Patty
    January 9, 2013

    I love the way you color coded these!

    Reply
  • Hannah Kincade
    January 10, 2013

    I do like the blue, but I also really like orange as well. I want to pet all of your orange booksies.

    Reply
  • erica and christy
    January 10, 2013

    Ha, I was going to say Christy would love your yellow covers, but she beat me here. My husband put the halt to me buying books a few years ago when I was up to *not telling how many* shelves and *cough* quite a few piles around the house by buying me a Kindle. I think I'm up to 60 books on there, but they aren't this fun to sort! 🙂
    erica

    Reply
  • Jadzia Brandli
    January 12, 2013

    Hi! New follower here. I never even thought about the color of book covers. But black does seem pretty popular. I like the blue covers, but I've red a few books with green and purple that were very cool (doesn't seem like there are many in those colors, though). 🙂

    Reply

POST COMMENT

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *