Hugo’s blog

I’ve always noticed that book covers in France always look more serious than in the US; maybe French publishers try to make books look more noble than American ones.

For example, here’s the US covers for the Harry Potter books:

Here are the French ones, in comparison:

As I was looking through NPR’s reading recommendations, I saw this book mentioned, How to talk about a book you haven’t read?:

I decided to look up what French readers were thinking about it, and saw that the cover in France was as usual very sober:

The difference is pretty striking.

Interestingly, the Canadian version is somewhat in the middle, with drawings, but very few colors:

Maybe that’s reflecting the struggle of both French and American cultures in Canada.

The UK edition is in also somewhat in the middle:

Finally, the US audiobook echoes the US cover. It’s actually interesting to see the difference with the book cover, with the same design but less colorful:

And this is how you can talk about books you haven’t read. Or about their cover, at least.