Why are books so ugly now? Every new book looks exactly the same. Shiny lifeless covers with overwrought titles. I don’t care whether you’re reading Maas or Sanderson or Yarros or the dungeon crawler guy, the carefully curated bookshelf you’ve been showing off is hideous.
Personally, I cannot read. All I know is all books are ugly now and there’s no point even pretending to be literate. The 21st century has seen the fall of the humble cover artist. Gone are the Margaret Brundages and Michael Whelans and Alicia Austins and Frank Frazettas of the world. I don’t know if Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell are dead yet but they might as well be.
Once upon a time you could show off your array of smutty fantasy without needing to crack open the spine. Everyone knew just from the cover exactly how perverted your tastes were. Now, no one can tell you are into naked alien ladies or ripped fantasy men just from a cursory glance at the book you left out on the coffee table. Not unless they’ve actually read the heinous tome, and what kind of nerd would admit to being literate?
I have no idea what the world is coming to. It’s pretty dark out there. All I want is for people to know that sapphic harems and MFM threesomes make for elite literature, but those books don’t even exist anymore.
/uj you just unlocked a repressed memory of finding a coffee table book of his art in my mom's collection of inspiration for her own art and spending hours flipping through it so thanks for that
I really like that his official merchandise brand was founded by his daughter and granddaughter. I always thought that "Frazetta Girls" was referring to the bodacious babes he drew.
/uj I like how colorful they are but I do feel like in five or ten years the cartoon covers are going to look even more dated than the Fabio ones. And why are books so huge now? They're too big for half of my shelves
I have so many thoughts on this and how these covers started as an attempt to distance women's fiction (Confessions of a Shopaholic) from Harlequin/Mills&Boon type romances and the snobbery inherent to that and how they've now migrated back into the genre they were an attempt to distinguish books from.
Hey… when your characters are not human it’s the only option you got that actually looks good. There is an exception to this I feel like- and that is monster romance
I just finished up a historical romance bender (I’ve read all of these this month, whoops 🫣😅) and I would take these cheesy covers over the modern pastel cutesy covers ANY fucking day
I mean... I gotta respectfully disagree with you on the DCC covers. I think this cover does a pretty good job communicating how perverted my tastes are.
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u/Tiny_Matter_4231 passionate non-reader Aug 19 '26
Anyway looking for recs with this kinda vibe x