Do My Book Covers Need To Match?

No?  Yes?  Sometimes?

Let's use examples.

Last week, I would have said, no, I do not need my covers to match. I own Stephen King's Dark Tower series and the covers do not match.  I have a mix of paperbacks, trade paperbacks and hardcovers. The designs on the covers themselves are different. I bought the first three novels years after they were released, when I first started the series.  I got others in the series at different points after their release. It didn't matter to me that the covers didn't match, I just wanted the stories. I have a couple other series like that.

Recently, I read The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde and loved it. I had to find out about the other books. I believe there are currently seven books in the series with one more set to be released. I don't know why, but I really wanted the cover of the second book to match the first. Do I just like the look of it better than the others? Yes, I think so, but like The Dark Tower it shouldn't matter, I should just want the stories. I looked at different sites and checked my local bookstore. No copies of the second book were at the bookstores in town. I looked at four different sites. I found the cover I wanted, at a pretty good price too. Why was this so important to me? By the time I purchase the last book, will the editions have changed? Will the covers I have now match the others I'll get in the future? Maybe, maybe not.

I guess I don't understand why it was important to me this time around. Maybe it's just this series, just these covers.  I don't know.  I guess I'll find out the next time I buy a book for a series I'm reading.

* There were more than just the three covers.

The Eyre Affair

I loved The Eyre Affair. I am totally hooked on Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series. I love Thursday. She was amazing. Thursday was a grown-up. Just a couple years older than me. It's been a while since I've read a book with a main character that was my age. Everyone has been in their twenties or a teen lately. I really related to Thursday and was happy to see a woman in her thirties taking charge, fighting the bad guy and dealing with relationships. Thursday was a complex character, like a real person.

I loved all the fun character names Fforde came up with. There were a lot though, and there was a point, while in the middle of the novel, where I couldn't read for a couple days and I kind of forgot who was who with some of the minor characters. Thankfully, Wikipedia helped me out with that... Not that there were too many characters or anything, you just have to pay attention while reading. I loved Thursday's Dad and the whole Next family. I am a little iffy on Landen. I think I liked Bowden better. I think I know what Hades was, I just wish there was more confirmation in the book. I liked Spike and Victory Analogy, Mycroft and Polly. So many wonderful characters. I wonder who we'll see in the next novel.

The alternate 1985 was intriguing. The English war with Russia. Wales having independence. The Battle of Waterloo. Winston Churchill. Literature is revered. People battle over Shakespeare. There is an entire investigate branch of the government devoted to the preservation of literature.  The LiteraTecs are amazing.  I loved Jane Eyre.  I loved everything about her novel and Rochester's involvement in Thursday's life.  I love the idea of entering a piece of literature, whether it is a novel, like Jane Eyre or one of Wordsworth's poems. Everything in Thursday's world is so different from ours, yet still similar.  It's just that priorities changed somewhere in history (or altered by the French Revisionists). I love the tidbits of history and altered history that Thursday's Dad is always talking about.

The Eyre Affair is such and interested, intricate, engaging, fun novel.  I enjoyed every minute of it. I had heard so many good things about Jasper Fforde (especially from over at What Red Read), that when I saw The Eyre Affair I had to pick it up.  I am so glad I did.  I have to read more by Fforde and I am obsessed with getting the rest of the Thursday Next series, which my local bookstore doesn't have in stock.  Time for online shopping. I need to get Lost in a Good Book.