Eli & Benjamin's Favourite Book Covers of 2018
December 23, 2018

The classic saying goes ''Don't judge a book by it's cover'' and yet, it's been proven time and time again that this logic is both impractical and just plain wrong. Book covers let you know what kind of book you'll be picking up before you even read the blurb, and there's an important way to highlight the work of visual artists. The poetry world has been especially adept at pairing visual art and poetry, and we feel like the rest of the literary world should follow their lead. It was so hard to choose but here are some of our favourite book covers of the year.
FICTION

Freshwater
Akwaeke Emezi
A National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” HonoreeShortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Ada has always been unusual. As an infant...
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Some Trick
Helen Dewitt
For sheer unpredictable brilliance, Gogol may come to mind, but no author alive today takes a reader as far as Helen DeWitt into the...
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My Sister, the Serial Killer
Oyinkan Braithwaite
"Pulpy, peppery and sinister, served up in a comic deadpan...This scorpion-tailed little thriller leaves a response, and a sting, you will remember."--NEW YORK TIMES"The...
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Everything Under
Daisy Johnson
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018** 'Daisy Johnson is a new goddamn swaggering monster of fiction.' Lauren Groff Words are important to Gretel,...
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The Frolic of the Beasts
Yukio Mishima
Translated into English for the first time, a gripping short novel about an affair gone wrong, from the acclaimed Japanese author, Yukio Mishima. Set...
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Jonny Appleseed
Joshua Whitehead
Finalist, Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize A tour-de-force debut novel about a Two-Spirit Indigiqueer young man and...
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Care Work
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
In their new, long-awaited collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award-winning writer and longtime disability justice activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the...
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Amateur
Thomas Page McBee
From an award-winning writer whose work bristles with “hard-won strength, insight, agility, and love” (Maggie Nelson), an exquisite and troubling narrative of masculinity, violence,...
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How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
Alexander Chee
From the author ofThe Queen of the Night, an essay collection exploring his education as a man, writer, and activist—and how we form our...
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Well-Read Black Girl
Glory Edim
An inspiring collection of essays by black women writers, curated by the founder of the popular book club Well-Read Black Girl, on the importance...
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Shit Is Real
Aisha Franz
A broken-hearted woman drifts into depression as she occupies her traveling neighbor's apartment After an unexpected breakup, a young woman named Selma experiences...
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Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures
Yvan Alagbé
A timely collection of work about race and immigration in Paris by one of France's most revered cult comic book artists.Yvan Alagbé is one...
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Parallel Lives
Olivier Schrauwen
This collects six wildly inventive short comics stories that might collectively be dubbed “speculative memoir.” Schrauwen’s deadpan depictions of his and his offspring's upcoming...
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The Lie And How We Told It
Tommi Parrish
Parrish’s emotionally loaded, painted graphic novel is is a visual tour de force, always in the service of the author’s themes: navigating queer desire,...
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Your Black Friend and Other Strangers
Ben Passmore
Your Black Friend and Other Strangers is a collection of culturally charged comics by cartoonist Ben Passmore, including the Eisner Award nominated and Ignatz Award-winning...
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Holy Wild
Gwen Benaway
In her third collection of poetry, Holy Wild, Gwen Benaway explores the complexities of being an Indigenous trans women in expansive lyric poems. She...
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Sheep Machine
Vi Khi Nao
SHEEP MACHINE is a textual inscape, a poetically painted nonfictional pasture where mechanical violence and visceral fear coalesce into a kind of science prosody,...
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If They Come for Us
Fatimah Asghar
“A debut poetry collection showcasing both a fierce and tender new voice.”—Booklist“Elegant and playful . . . The poet invents new forms and updates classic...
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ESL or You Weren't Here
Aldrin Valdez
ESL or You Weren’t Here tells the story of a queer Pinoy who immigrates to New York in the 1990s in order to be...
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The White Review Anthology
The White Review Anthology collects the best fiction and non-fiction published in the magazine's seven-year history, including work by Anne Carson, Chris Kraus, China...
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New Poets of Native Nations
Heid E. Erdrich
A landmark anthology celebrating twenty-one Native poets first published in the twenty-first centuryNew Poets of Native Nations gathers poets of diverse ages, styles, languages,...
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Maman apprivoisée
Geneviève Elverum
Maman apprivoisée, écrit pendant la maladie de l’auteure, est la suite de son premier recueil de poèmes, Maman sauvage, que nous avons publié en...
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Short : histoires courtes en bandes dessinées
Une trentaine d'histoires courtes issues de fanzines tels que Tok-Tok, Skefkef, Lab 619, Messaha proposées par des auteurs du Liban, d’Égypte, du Soudan, d’Irak, de Syrie, ou encore d’Algérie,...
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Corps
Chloé Savoie-Bernard
Nous possédons tous un corps. Certains s'en servent comme d'une armure, d'autres y pensent assez peu. On peut le soigner, le blesser volontairement, le...
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Je suis Shingo
Kazuo Umezu
Rêveur au tempérament singulier, le jeune Satoru, en dernière année d’école primaire, se distingue un peu de ses copains et suscite souvent leur moquerie....
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