Reading: Why Judging a Book by Its Cover Is Not Wrong
Judging a book by its cover is not wrong in reading because it actually benefits us to read more and improve our reading at the end.
Don’t judge a book by its cover.
We have all heard that.
I, too, sometimes judge a book by its cover, and most of the time, I see a cover that is interesting. Then, I picked it up and sometimes bought it. This is why I have many books that have an interesting cover that I love to put on my desk.
Well, is it wrong?
Not really. It is wrong in cases where we aren’t trying to read it or even touch it because of the cover. If we don’t even try to read the book because of its cover, it’s still our own choice.
In this article, I want to share with you how I read more because of how I judge the covers of books that I’ve seen. It’s not because judging a book by its cover is wrong, in this case about books. Judging a book by its cover is actually a useful thing to do because it could help us read more and love our reading more.
We all need to judge a book by its cover because it gives us an important step before reading.
First impression
First impressions are important, whether you want to pick up a book or meet someone special.
When I’m in my college organization, I sometimes use their first impression as a consideration for whether to invite them to the organization or not. Once they give their first impression, I can start guiding them through the next meeting and interviews. This helps me to really understand whether he or she is the right person or not.
The same is true of books, where I most of the time see the book cover first before reading the book. It helps me get enjoyment from buying the book or not.
First impressions are important in order to read more.
The more we are interested in the cover and the first impression, the more we will read it. When I bought 12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson, I saw its cover. I already knew he wrote a book before, and I’m interested in reading his book.
The cover helps me pick that book and gives me motivation to read it. It’s a first impression, too.
It helped me to read it and buy the book, even though it’s pretty hard to understand the words 😥. (I’m still reading it and it hasn’t finished yet. 😅)
The content is on the cover
The cover that we see on the front of the book summarizes all the contents inside.
Even though it is not the entire book, we can get the main idea from the cover. Deep Work by Cal Newport — we can see right away from the cover that this book is talking about deep work sessions.
How can we focus on an hour block or more to start working and get an effective result?
The overall content we can see from the cover itself.
Great book cover helps me pick up the book more often
I love bringing books whose covers are interesting.
Feel-good productivity by Ali Abdaal book cover is interesting to me. I love to bring it to the cafe, class, or library to read it. The more I bring it, it unconsciously helps me to read it more.
This is actually important because, most of the time, the key to reading more is picking up your book more often.
The cover actually helps us read more at the end, but does it mean that without a great cover, the book would be less enjoyable to read or no one would want to read it? Ofcourse not.
Cover still doesn’t matter most of the time.
If we really decided to read the book in the first place, we would read it and buy it.
People on the internet love to give their book recommendations.
You can see their own summary and use it as guidance for whether to read the book or not.
I sometimes use people’s summaries before reading the book in order to know whether I need to read it or not.
Even so, the cover is just a tool for us to see the book in the big picture. Use the cover as your guide to read more and love your reading. I love to collect books and even read them because the cover helps me understand what’s inside and makes my collection look beautiful.
It still depends on you whether you want to read the book or not.
The cover is just the first part, but at the end, you will end up with the activity of reading.
I sometimes still read a book whose cover is not interesting to see. It’s because I know that it is valuable to read it and worth the time to do so. I don’t have to judge the book by its cover and think, “This book is ugly; I don’t want to read it.”
I want to read it, not only because of the cover but also to learn what I can get from the book.
What matters most is how you can build yourself up to read more and expand your knowledge.
So, the cover is to help us read more and find enjoyment in reading books.
It’s still not the standard for whether to choose the book or not.
Choose wisely, because at the end, you are the one who reads it and decides to implement the knowledge inside.
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