This week's BTT topic is about illustrations in books: "How do you feel about illustrations in your books? Graphs? Photos? Sketches?"And it seems like we've answered this one before, but it's one of my favorite questions – always interesting to see all the differences of opinion.
Personally, I love having illustrations in my books. I'd like all books to be illustrated, fiction and non-. Photos, drawings, graphics of all kinds. I'm not proposing turning every book into a graphic novel, of course. But I think a few illustrations are a wonderful and welcome addition to almost any book. I'm thinking especially of the sort of illustrations in the novels of John Gardner, one of my favorite writers. He used to say that he liked including artwork in his books because it drew attention to the book as a work of art, and I like that. Guess I've just never gotten over my childhood love of picture books.
How about you? Yes, no? And why not?
I think illustrations can be nice. It depends on the book. I like them.
ReplyDeleteI love illustrations...and maps and graphs and anything else the author wants to throw in. I think it can only add to a book.
ReplyDeleteI really think it would depend on the type of book. I love to imagine how characters look like based on the writer's descriptions. Having an illustration of them often destroys that for me.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you. I think there is that childhoodhood love of sitting and looking at the drawings for hours that has transferred to my adult life. But someone else made a good point about how they sometimes take away from your own imagination, which I can agree with. However, if illustrations are in a book, I just love to go over all the detail.
ReplyDeleteI am far less illustrious, preferring there to be less. It could be I sent 7 years reading books filled with graphs and charts? Hard to say. Now I prefer to just read.
ReplyDeleteI think it depends on the book. I love photos in biographies and memoirs, though.
ReplyDeleteI think that for adult fiction, I rather they didn't have pics. Non-fiction needs them. Here's mine.
ReplyDeleteI think it really depends. Of course, I still read books with my daughter that tend to have at least some illustrations.
ReplyDeleteIt depends on the book.
ReplyDeletehttp://fredasvoice.blogspot.com/2010/03/booking-through-illustrious.html
I thought of an exception...I have a leather bound book of the complete works of Shakespeare and there are some beautiful black and white illustrations of the characters at the beginning of each play. Love them!
ReplyDeleteI like artwork when it adds to the story. I like your answer! I want to check out the author you mention!
ReplyDeleteI agree. I don't want my adult fiction to be overrun with any kind of graphics, but it does add something. My dad loaned me some old Westerns of his and they had small illustrations at the beginning of each chapter. Even something as small as that was a nice touch. I like what John Gardner had to say about books as works of art. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI love all of the different thought from this week. BTT is pretty boring when everyone agrees to the same thing. I like graphs and maps but not anything that implies what a character or scene might look like. I like to think that up on my own. :O)
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