Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week a new Top Ten list will be posted. Everyone is welcome to join. Link back to The Broke and the Bookish so everyone can check out other bloggers' lists. It's a fun way to get to know fellow bloggers.
I saw the theme for this weeks Top Ten was books and artwork so I was in. These are all covers I have really enjoyed over the years- and in picking these it's made me wonder if I shouldn't go back and revisit a couple of these. So here we go...
The Cats of Tanglewood Forest by Charles De Lint and Charles Vess.
The Crystal Shard by R.A. Salvatore, cover art by Larry Elmore.
Golden Fool by Robin Hobb.
The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien. Ted Nasmith (along with John Howe) are two of the best Tolkien illustrators out there, for my money.
Renegades of Pern by Anne McCaffrey.
A Time of Exile by Katherine Kerr
I love these covers, Greg. I didn't get to this TTT, but there are so many great covers out there. I would totally put a lot of the ones you show my walls! Great choices.
ReplyDeleteThanks Jan! I haven't don a Top Ten in a while, and this seemed like fun. I am a big fan of cover art... and you're right, there are so many good ones out there. Mine tend to be older picks for some reasons, but there is so much good cover art on new releases these days too.
DeleteOk, so these are gorgeous, thank you for sharing :) Amazing art!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you for visiting! I had fun picking these out, it was hard to narrow down to just ten. And I keep changing around... :)
DeleteThe Nasmith cover is wonderful. It's nice for us to give some love to the illustrators for once! :)
ReplyDeleteI agree! I love his Middle Earth stuff...so evocative.
DeleteGreat picks - I sense a fantasy theme here. :) I really like the Silmarillion one :)
ReplyDeleteThat's one of my favorites too- he has some Middle earth pics that just blow me away. Love his renderings!
DeleteI really love the huge epic fantasy artwork. The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson have some pretty amazing cover art similar to those you have listed. Great picks!
ReplyDeleteMe too. Nothing like a good cover piece they really set the tone for a fantastic story. I will totally buy a book if the artwork is good! :)
DeleteI loved all of your picks especially the Anne McCaffery cover. I think I read nearly all of her Pern series. She had a way with dragons didn't she? I like how you also displayed the entire art piece along with the cover. A lot of the picture is missing on the cover. I actually corresponded with artist Ted Nasmith and he gave me permission to display his artwork as my blog header. He seems to be a very nice person. thanks so much for stopping by today. kelley—the road goes ever ever on
ReplyDeleteKelley, thanks for commenting. I like a lot of the covers of the McCaffrey books, especially this one. I was struck by the way the entire art piece was often much more involved than the little bit we sometimes get on the cover.
DeleteNice to hear that Ted Nasmith was open to that. Several of his pieces are favorites of mine!
I love that you added the original pictures - they look so much different (and better in my opinion) without all the text. I'd take the cover of Golden Fool anytime! It's pretty cool. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Sofia! I started out wanting to display a few in their full glory and decided to keep going! :)
DeleteLots of great looking fantasy reads up there. Love the covers!
ReplyDeleteTeresa @ Readers Live A Thousand Lives
Thank you for stopping, I had a hard time picking which ones to use!
DeleteAmazing picks! I love that you posted full pics, they look stunning! Some old schools here but so pretty, and you can tell there's some work put into these. :)
ReplyDeleteGreat selection!
Thank you! Yes some are a bit old school, I though that too as I was picking. Have a great day!
DeleteThanks for stopping by my TTT earlier! I love what you said about how looking at these covers makes you want to revisit those books. I feel exactly the same way. I especially love the covers to Golden Fool and A Time of Exile. I'm adding both of them to by TBR list, since I haven't yet read either. Great illustrations, and I loved looking at the full pictures! You can really tell how much thought and creativity went into these covers by looking at the larger images. Great list!
ReplyDeleteThanks, hope you enjoy the reads! I like the full pictures so much more too...
DeleteOoh, a Larry Elmore cover, makes me feel all nostalgic! ;_;
ReplyDeleteThis was a great topic, too bad I didn't notice it until too late. I should do something similar in my blog sometime. I love good cover art.
I do too, totally with you on that. Great cover art will make my buy a book, even if it turns out not to be not very good LOL! And I liked a lot of Larry Elmore's stuff back in the day... heck, still do!
DeleteI like the Golden Fool one best - the tattoo links in nicely with the wall covering.
ReplyDeleteGreat choices! The Golden Fool cover art is wonderful, and of course I've always loved Michael Whalen's Pern covers. I almost put his cover for The White Dragon on my list, but I'd already done three Pern covers and I didn't want the list to be entirely Pern! Oh, darn, I just remembered another cover I love that I forgot to put on my list -- the one for Juliet Marillier's Wildwood Dancing. I like the Naismith Tolkien art, too, and Alan Lee and John Howe and the Hildebrandt brothers... but I really love Tolkien's own original drawings!
ReplyDeleteI'm a big fan of Michael Whelan, and could have probably filled my Top Ten with his stuff- but had to stop myself. :) Some of the PErn covers are gorgeous. And Nasmith has some nice Tolkien images as well- and yes The Brothers Hildebrandt. Miss their artwork!
DeleteBeautiful covers, Greg. Great choices! My reading preference of the moment is a good cozy mystery, but sci-fi/fantasy (etc etc etc) covers have been known to draw me to a book. :O)
ReplyDeleteI like cozies, I'm not really the target audience but I get a kick out of the punny titles and sometimes the cover art is great as well. Something comforting about the, Sci fi and fantasy covers did always draw me in ... :)
DeleteI really love that you included Drizzt covers. I have a print of Drizzt by Tyler Walpole.. I have yet to frame it but he signed it at the Denver Comic Con: http://www.comiccollectorlive.com/LiveData/Issue.aspx?id=b2973d86-520d-4baa-840f-088b3f21aa00 . I like your style of art... very fantasy in the 70s to me.
ReplyDeleteThat is very nice, bet that will look nice framed. I like the runes on the swords... I did notice my picks were largely old school, got a chuckle out of that when I went back and looked. :) Hmm...
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