Best Lists From Cover to Last Line

Thanks to Cindy Orr's RA Rundown I came across links to 2 interesting book lists.

• Book Page's Best Book Covers of the Year
• American Book Review's 100 Best Last Lines

 I know we are taught not to judge a book by its cover, but in this post from 13 months ago, I wrote about how important covers are in the work we do as Readers' Advisors.  From the post:

Publishers are getting much better at trying to sell the appeal of a book with its cover. You can tell the genre and tone/mood of most fiction just by looking at the book's cover. Also, publishers include appeal info on the flaps and in the blurbs on the back covers. With so little time to sell a book to a patron, using the cover to help us divine clues about what is between those covers, is a helpful RA tool in and of itself.

So what can you tell about the appeal of the books on the list from looking at their covers?

The last lines list was great.  John and I talked about it at the RA desk for 10 minutes.  His favorite (from Farwell to Arms) was there, but mine is book that ends in a flip book, not words, so it was not.  Interestingly John noted, most people pick the last line of 1984, which is right at the top of the list.

So check it out for yourself.