I miss the old fashioned book covers. Okay, stay with me... I assure you this will be a riveting read and not an 'old man shouts at the clouds' post.

I've always loved reading and read voraciously in my youth and formative years. Most Saturday mornings were spent going to Barking Library, heading off to Cash Converters to look at all the cool (probably stolen and resold- this is Barking in the latest 80s and early 90s after all) NES and Megadrive games (not SNES as my best friend and I did not own that system until a lot later). This would be topped off by a visit to my local comic and book shop, Rodney’s Books and Games. This place was a mecca for nerds like me as it covered videogames, anime and manga VHS tapes down in the basement whilsts books and magazines were upstairs. The second hand books were sold by an old man called Rodney and he had amassed quite an impressive collection. A friend of a friend was a huge Dr. Who nerd and picked up loads here at a bargain price. However, I'd love nothing better than to crate surf through this rows of thousands of books and appreciate the artistry on show. The covers that stood out to me were the SF Masterworks, Pan Horrors, The Usborne ‘World of the Unknown’ series and Fighting Fantasy ones as they often featured unique painted covers with lots of detail. They were quite singular and evocative.

Rodney’s Books and Games was a formative part of my childhood.

Nowadays, when I go to a bookshop the derivative covers look bland, often similar to other covers of popular books. It's like those copycat DVDs you used to find in pound shops back in the day which had titles and covers based on popular films. Did this scheme actually work? I don't know but I do wish that covers nowadays would be more interesting than the bland also-rans we often get now.

I blame the stock images industry as it is easier than ever to select a stock image and then plop it on your book as a cover, only to realise that it has been used elsewhere, possibly in a entirely different genre. I’ve joined a couple of social media groups where people share photos of cool covers they like but here are a few of mine:

I’m not saying that all new covers are inherently bad, that would be ridiculous, but there does seem to be a formula to a lot of the mainstream stuff. Here are a couple of recent covers that I’ve liked: