The Proverbial Proverb

Everyone has always told me never to judge a book by its cover. For years, I’ve just accepted this as sage advice (thymely too). But the other day, I was in Park Towers at Liberty Books, and I realized that I was judging books by their covers like a demon. I mean, realistically, I don’t have much more to judge a book by than its cover, do I? If I haven’t heard of the author or the title, what am I supposed to judge the book by? By weight perhaps? I tried to ignore the cover completely, flipped to page 127 and tried to pass judgement on that basis. Didn’t work. I thought, well maybe I can judge the book by the blurbs, but no, they’re on the cover too. So really, the only way not to judge the book by its cover is to read the whole thing. Understood. But obviously, I'm not going to stand there and read the whole thing (I learned my lesson from the Barnes and Noble incident of '99) So, in order to read it, I need to first obtain a copy, which presumably, I must do by passing initial judgement. So you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t as far as I’m concerned. And I know you’re going to say, well Dave, it’s not really about books, its about judging things by their appearance rather than their value. But for God’s sake, if it doesn’t apply to books, then where do we go from there. It’s a slippery slope I tells ya. Those proverbs are some tricky business.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I just spilled some milk, and I’m a little upset.