Friday Face-Off: Grass
Welcome to The Friday Face-Off, a weekly meme created by Books by Proxy! Each Friday, we will pit cover against cover while also taking the opportunity to showcase gorgeous artwork and feature some of our favorite book covers. If you want to join the fun, simply choose a book each Friday that fits that week’s predetermined theme, post and compare two or more different covers available for that book, then name your favorite. A list of future weeks’ themes are available at Lynn’s Book Blog.
This week’s theme is:
“The grass is always greener on the other side of personal extinction”
~ a cover featuring GRASS
Mogsy’s Pick:
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
This was a book that annoyed me to no end, but interestingly enough I ended up enjoying the trilogy as a whole. The story follows disillusioned protagonist Quentin Coldwater, a high school student who never really grew out of his love for a series of novels he read as a kid about the adventures of five siblings in a magical land called Fillory. Compared to that, the real world couldn’t help but disappoint.
So imagine his excitement when he discovered that magic was real. And not only was it real, Quentin himself was identified as a promising young magician and invited to highly secret and exclusive school called the Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy in upstate New York.
Here are some of the more interesting covers or the ones that fit this week’s theme:
From left to right, top to bottom:
Viking (2009) – Arrow (2009) – Plume (2015)
Polish (2010) – Dutch (2010) – Italian (2010)
Italian (2017) – Portuguese (2010) – Portuguese (2011)
Swedish (2011) – Bulgarian (2010) – Hungarian (2015)
Winner:
There are some really pretty covers going up against each other this week. My top three are probably the Arrow edition and the Hungarian edition, with the Portuguese edition (the 2010 version) coming in first place. What can I say, I just love shades of blue.
What do you think? Which one is your favorite?
The BiblioSanctum 
That was my favorite too!
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It’s quite pretty, isn’t it 😀
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Nice variety of these! I might like the Viking and 2011 Portuguese ones the best! Hard to say, I keep changing my mind! I like the Arrow one too, and even the Bulgarian one a bit. Maybe the Italian one too, lol, with the tree and the green…
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Yes, this week there are a number of very strong covers!
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The Portuguese is sooooo depressing
I think I will go with the Hungarian one
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I would agree too, though the “depressing” theme actually fits the story well because seriously nothing made these characters happy, lol!
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I love how they are all pretty different!
My top 3 are
1. Swedish
2. Polish
3. Hungarian
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I do love the Hungarian one. It’s a bit plain, but very dramatic!
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Sadly, this book annoyed me from the start and I DNFed it! I like the Swedish cover though…
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Yes, it has some nice covers, but ugh, I came close to dnfing it too. The characters drove me insane!
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Many of them are quite beautiful there!
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I agree, a lot of pretty covers this week!
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Grumpy Cat says “None!”.
While I finished the book, I’ve never read another book by Grossman. I’m a big Narnia and CS Lewis fan, so his pillorying of Narnia really hit a nerve.
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Pillorying and Fillorying of Narnia. LOL, couldn’t resist.
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At first, I was a fan of the Hungarian cover most, but seeing this one on a larger scale… I’m going to have to agree with you 🙂
I never read this series, but if I recall, wasn’t one thing people were saying about this series was that it was “Harry Potter for adults”?
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Yeah, that description has been bandied around. It’s accurate, I guess, if Harry and all his friends were arrogant little shits who did nothing but whine 😛
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So what you’re saying is if Harry joined Slytherin? 😛
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LOL, yes, that’s not too far off actually! I seem to recall a review I read of The Magicians once that stated something similar, like Harry Potter for adults if the story was about Malfoy and all his asshat friends 😀
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That’s the one I would chose as my favorite too. You know, thinking back, I think I’ve picked a lot of Portuguese ones as my faves over the past few months. I’m hesitant to read this series although I am curious. I’ve heard just as many good things as bad it seems. I’ve also never started the watching the series. Have you? Do they match up?
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I have picked Portuguese editions for a lot of these FF-Os as well!
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I love the Arrow edition, but I couldn’t stand this book. Actually I never finished it, oh well!
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I barely managed to finish. The series gets better, but ugh, this one was tough to get through.
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Got to agree – I love the Arrow and the Portuguese. Difficult to decide between them.
Lynn 😀
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Yeah both of them have their strong points 🙂
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This series is one that always tops the “love to hate” lists, haha. It does have some lovely cover art though; my favourite is the last one!
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Yep, there are as many glowing reviews as there are those from people who hated it!
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Those photos are incredible! I usually only see the US versions unless I see a blogger with another copy. I liked the one you picked as winner, too 🙂
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I’m in the US so I mostly see the US editions too, so this meme helps me discover more editions and covers 🙂
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Not having read the book and having no idea what it is about, I like Italian (2010) best.
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Ooh, that one’s dark and moody, I kinda like that one too!
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Cool choice!
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