When beautiful people read books, the world goes mad. The idea that someone could be both very attractive and vaguely literary is endlessly provocative to nerdy, writerly types who want to maintain intellectual superiority over those hotter than themselves.
Much discussion was had in 2019, after Bella and Gigi Hadid were seen clutching tasteful tomes like Albert Camus’ The Stranger outside fashion shows. Or following Jacob Elordi's Instagram stories, which shout out his highbrow bedside table stack, from John Steinbeck’s East of Eden to Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre.
Other celebrities have the reading bug too. In 2020, Kaia Gerber shared a reading list including Plato and French theorist Roland Barthes with her followers. Last summer Dua Lipa posted a pensive pic propped up on a bed with Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids. Then, of course, there was the first series of The White Lotus, in which Sydney Sweeney and Brittany O’Grady’s student characters brought a succession of academic theory, like Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, to the pool.
But carrying around classic novels doesn’t just give models an aura of intellectual chic – regular civilians are now doing it too, as a kind of brainy thirst trap. An article in Bustle last September reported on men ditching selfies with puppies to pose with female-coded books by the likes of Sally Rooney and Ottessa Moshfegh, in the hopes of dredging up dating app matches. There have also been recent reports of men taking books to bars to try and attract girls. With this in mind, here is an entirely serious, entirely scientific ranking of the hottest, most alluring book covers to carry this year.
These might be big hitters in canonical world literature, but unfortunately the hotness without does not live up to the mostly excellent scholarship within. The white-and-red motif is a bit aseptic, and the cover artworks are mostly safe, unimaginative paintings and photographs. Plus, you might give off the unwanted impression that you’re an A-level student with your set text.
Not a distinct series, but an unwelcome trend nevertheless. “Blob” covers are, as Print magazine described, “filled with amorphous daubs of warm, bright colour” with no discernible pattern. These peaked a couple of years ago: practically every new release, particularly those by female authors, got the blob treatment, including Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters and The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. With childlike primary colours and barely-there designs that could’ve been churned out by AI, these often did a disservice to the prose they enclosed. Don’t be caught in public with them.
If you’re after a new copy of a 20th-century classic, you’ll likely end up with one of these. There’s nothing wrong with them, per se – the artworks are good and the sans-serif titles are crisp. But there’s nothing particularly striking or unusual about them either; they’re unlikely to catch the wandering eye of a single gal (or guy) scanning the pub. Think of them as the Uniqlo of book covers: good as dependable basics, but not worth basing your personality on.
By this, we mean old (sometime very old) books picked up in antiquarian shops. They’ve almost always lost their dust jackets, so you’re left with a slightly tatty book with a plain coloured cover. This might create a bit of mystery as to what you’re reading, but also carries associated vibes of fustiness, snobbery and dandruff. Use with caution.
The first small publisher on this list is a solid choice: these monochrome essay collections often have a quote on the cover rather than a picture, the perfect lure for potential suitors to stop and stare at. Of course, it also allows wise guys the opportunity to flippantly ask you what the extract says.
Many will consider it sacrilege for anything involving the sage of Sacramento to not take podium position. And it’s true that these editions of Didion’s books have much to recommend them, with black-and-white photos of the endlessly stylish writer complemented by tasteful pastels. The uncomfortable truth, however, is that Didion has acquired an association with a certain aesthetic: the muted colours and corporate minimalism beloved by basic millennials. You’d almost expect to see these books in place of a Bible when you open the desk drawer in a boutique hotel room.
Can something so ubiquitous be genuinely hot? Absolutely. Just look at the fundamentals: the black-and-orange colour scheme fits the vintage focus and ages well (cracks in a book’s spine show up better with darker covers). Toting such a common edition of a book also dampens down the pretentiousness of reading the likes of Marcus Aurelius and Dostoyevsky on the Tube. The exception is Morrissey’s autobiography, a famously turgid book he insisted on publishing in the series, and which gives off nuclear @beam_me_up_softboi vibes – avoid at all costs.
This little-known but pioneering publisher is worth getting in on. Its red-spined classics series is mostly dedicated to reviving classic travel writing by everyone from EM Forster to Jan Morris. Travel writing is inherently mysterious and alluring, and obscure travel writing even more so. (And if someone’s Hinge prompt mentions The Leopard, the famous Italian novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, go one better and say you loved The Last Leopard, Eland’s biography of the author.)
A giant among hot book covers. Faber’s poetry series is designed by the prestigious Pentagram agency and uses large type and clever colour combinations to devastating effect. Plus, it’s poetry, which is quite hot in itself. Jacob Elordi, who knows a thing or two about this whole business, was caught last October in a big black overcoat complemented with a navy Faber edition of WH Auden’s Selected Poems. Make like Jacob.
This small London imprint is known for two things: winning four Nobel Prizes after only a decade in operation, and its clean white-and ultramarine colour scheme. The blue books with white text are fiction, usually in translation, and the white books with blue text are literary non-fiction – all are tasteful and will mark you out as someone with thoughts about the latest Patricia Lockwood essay. Top marks go to its brick-sized edition of Septology, the magnum opus of 2023’s Nobel laureate, Jon Fosse.
This series has proper historical weight: it was started in 1955 by poet, bookseller and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and its fourth release, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems, was the subject of a landmark obscenity trial in the US in 1957. They also look great, particularly the navy-and-red edition of Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems – which you could indeed read at lunch in Pret as the office workers come and go, and look like the most tasteful executive in town.
Yes, plays. You might not see the point of reading play scripts, which are essentially instruction manuals, but Faber’s drama series is surely the hottest in print right now. All the editions have great covers. Read them out and about, and they might give the impression that you’re an actor wrestling with an intense new role. Many of them are also tied to plays currently (or recently) in theatres, which is the perfect springboard for a stranger to enthuse about a performance or complain about directorial choices. They are also much cheaper than actually going to see the plays – and stylish thriftiness is never not in fashion.
