My previous two Top Ten Tuesday posts have been lengthy and thoroughly thought-out. The topic for this week, from The Broke and the Bookish, is about book covers. Anything about book covers. And, initially, I was set to write another lengthy, thoroughly thought-out post about my favourite book covers. But I very quickly thought ‘nuts to that’. Here instead are ten purple book covers from my shelves.

1. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker (1982)

Is it safe to assume that when most of you saw the title of my post you thought ‘I bet he’s got The Color Purple in there’? So let’s get that out of the way.

2. Purple Hibiscus, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2003)

How many of you also thought ‘I bet he has Purple Hibiscus in there’? It doesn’t actually have much purple on the cover, more pink. Yet my copy of another Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun, has more purple on it. Go figure.

3. Augustus, by Adrian Goldsworthy (2014)

Purple is a colour that came to be associated with imperial Rome, so it is fitting that Goldsworthy’s biography of the first Roman Emperor has a striking purple cover.

4. George’s Marvellous Medicine, by Roald Dahl (1981)

5. Narcopolis, by Jeet Thayil (2012)

This is the only book on the list that would also have featured on my original list of my ten favourite book covers.

6. Right Ho, Jeeves, by PG Wodehouse (1934)

Wodehouse’s novels are each published with a different coloured cover by Arrow Books. Fortunately for this list, I do have one that is purple.

7. The Tell-Tale Brain, by VS Ramachandran (2011)

A nice use of negative space on this cover as well.

8. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway (1940)

This novel is my favourite Hemingway, but that is not saying much – I’m not a Hemingway fan.

9. Dune, by Frank Herbert (1965)

A classic sci-fi cover design. Given that I enjoyed this much more than I expect to, I wonder if I can get the rest of his Dune novels with a similar design?

10. The Complete Fairy Tales, by Hans Christian Anderson (1835-1872?)

In a big leather-bound edition.