I have an intense book addiction. For a while, I used paper boxes full of books as a bed frame. You know your habit is serious when you start making furniture out of books.
Book nerds like me will make any excuse to score another title for their collections. Variant book covers are one of my biggest pitfalls. Like, yeah, I have this title in hardcover and paperback, but not U.K. paperback! Obviously, I need it.
Publishers know that the hipster eye turns toward aesthetics. That's why you see so many new, redesigned book covers on store shelves. Whether it's a series of new editions from a single author, or an overhaul of an entire publishing line, publishers pretty-up their collections so you'll buy them.
And that's not a bad thing. I mean, we get new covers to face-out for our shelfies, and they get the money to hire designers to make even more new covers. Win-win-win.
So don't listen to the people who say silly things like, "You have too many books." Here are 18 fabulous, redesigned book covers that you should add to your collection today.
1. Emma by Jane Austen
How fitting to have the fashionable Emma Woodhouse rendered in embroidery!
2. The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
This eye-popping, three-color design hearkens back to poster art from the 1930s.
3. No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
Picador put out a series of Cormac McCarthy's novels with these highly-visual, blurb-embellished covers.
4. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
The art on this edition of Jane Eyre really captures the novel's Gothic spirit.
5. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
Alaska's fields of snow and trees seem all the more vast on this cover.
6. A Merry Christmas by Louisa May Alcott
Did you know Penguin has a Christmas Classics line?
7. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
From startup Rock Paper Books comes this intensely beautiful cover.
8. A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The U.K. cover for Lucia Berlin's short story collection is so much better than the U.S. version.
9. The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
This cover is gorgeous in its minimalism.
10. Good Night, Mr. Tom by Michelle Magorian
This blue-and-black color amplifies the wholesomeness of Michelle Magorian's YA novel.
11. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Any book in the Picador Modern Classics line is small enough to fit in your pocket.
12. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
Another one from Rock Paper Books, in which Griffin becomes a noir anti-hero.
13. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
This cover's lovely cut-paper design belies the darkness of the story within.
14. Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah
Some may argue that this design is not as powerful as the author's childhood photo, but I think it really speaks to the younger readers who'll pick up the book.
15. The Liars' Club by Mary Karr
Like the edition of The Lovely Bones above, this cover for Mary Karr's The Liars' Club hides its bleak details.
16. Paradise Lost by John Milton
The third and final entry from Rock Paper Books, this adaptation of John Milton's epic really does the poem justice.
17. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
This is just a taste of the covers for the new, illustrated Harry Potter books.
18. The Little Black Classics Boxed Set from Penguin
The 80 books in this elegant set are nearly identical with their black-and-white covers.
Image: mybookbath/Instagram
