The Terror of Knowing

Book Travelling Thursdays is a weekly meme for book bloggers which celebrates the distance a book travels around the world through its covers in different countries. It was created by Cátia and Danielle and you can visit the Goodreads group for more information.

This week’s topic is Everything has an end! Choose your favourite conclusion to a series. Now, given my unfortunate tendency to prefer standalone novels, or to have only partly read trilogies or series of books, or to have caught up but be a fan of an ongoing book series, this topic was actually quite challenging for me. So I’m going to have to be very, very stereotypical and choose JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Confession time: I obviously bought this book the day it was released, but it took me weeks to finish it. I’m not sure how much of that was me not wanting to finish the Harry Potter books forever and how much of that was actually a reflection of how much I was enjoying the book itself. It was never my favourite book of the series (Prisoner of Azkaban or Order of the Phoenix probably are) but I can safely say it has been a grower and after nearly 9 years I think I have finally come to terms with it as a series conclusion and actually admitted that it works very well as a conclusion to the entire Harry Potter saga. It might not be many people’s favourite book but I think it is a fitting and appropriate conclusion. (Caveat: … were it not for all the deaths!)

But, more importantly for this post, let’s look at the covers…

Original Cover – both published by Bloomsbury (UK edition), 2007

The original UK hardcover editions will always hold a special place in my heart! The one on the left is the one I own – the general/children’s edition of the book, whereas the one on the right is the allegedly adult’s edition of the book. I’m amused by the fact that to market Harry Potter to adults Bloomsbury basically stick a black/white photograph on the cover as though that makes it classy! There’s absolutely no shame in being seen reading Harry Potter in public if you’re an adult but I suppose they wondered if there was some kind of social stigma or embarrassment so published these editions for more adult readers. I’m actually really not a fan of the cover design of the original edition but, like I said, for nostalgia purposes, it holds a real place in my heart – I just dislike the illustration style as it is on this particular book in the series.

Cover(s) from my country, UK – published by Bloomsbury (Paperback Signature edition), 2010

Aside from the usual hardcover editions and adult editions, a few years ago Bloomsbury re-issued the Harry Potter series with this new cover design. I actually really like them – I like the simplicity of the cover illustration and each in the series had a simple scene or object relevant to the story depicted in this fairly minimalist style on the cover. The beauty, in my opinion, is in the simplicity and part of me wishes I had purchased the box set because they look wonderful together, and I’m not so much a fan of the new paperbacks.

Favourite Cover – published by Scholastic (US edition), 2007

I’m actually quite sad that I don’t own a set of the original US hardcover editions because I adore the illustrations on those editions. Every time I see an American booktuber make reference to Harry Potter or I spy the box set on their bookshelves in the background of a video, I get major book envy. I think my favourite is the Order of the Phoenix cover – it’s just beautiful!

Least Favourite Cover – published by Tammi (Finnish edition), 2007

I’m not fond of the art style on this cover – why does everyone have quite protruding noses? Although I do like the fact that various items of relevance are depicted with the characters, I’m not quite sure what the relevance of the scarves are? Are they scarves? I can’t tell. Like I said, not a fan of the illustration style, which really does seem to make or break Harry Potter covers for me.

That was this week’s Book Travelling Thursday. What do you think of these covers? Which is your favourite? Have you participated in Book Travelling Thursday too? Let me know in the comments!

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