Guest post: How Important are the Covers of a Book? by Rodica Mihalis

Today’s guest blog post is brought to you by Rodica Mihalis. This article was originally published on http://rodicamihalis.wordpress.com.

How Important are the Covers of a Book?

Anyone who had been either following this blog or read my book, poems or short stories, already knows I was not thinking of books and their covers, when I chose the title of this post. I refer to people and their physical facades, beautiful at first sight, yet possibly poisonous…

In other words, let’s think not of “books and their covers”, but of people and their superficial, deceiving, at times dangerous, or heartbreaking insides. Beauty that covers rotted souls or holes instead of hearts.

How do we determine what’s real and true?  At times, judging by the number of schemes I experienced personally, or my friends did, plus the ”daily news” I concluded it might not be my bad luck because I was born on a 13th, but the increased number of dishonest people.  For instance, the often heard comment: “How could my husband / wife be so jealous of me? I would never cheat!”  Frankly, honesty prevented me from giving opinions on such topics, especially when I knew about 60% of marriages end up in divorce.  What was THE MOTIVATION of excessive jealousy (feel free to replace jealousy with anything that applies to your personal situation). I didn’t know, and generally if one is confused on a topic, their explanations would be confusing too wow!!! 🙂  It is best to only speak on topics one understands and I didn’t this particular one.

The questioning and my inability to answer went on for a while, until a third party, offered the answer:  “Generally, people who cheat, think everyone else does. The logical, normal believe is that if he / she behaves in a certain way, everyone else does, and that includes their life partner.”  A simple explanation. As the saying goes, many times we don’t see the forest because we are too close to one tree.

Do you remember the famous fairy tale of Snow White? The horrifying step-mother disguised as an old, kind woman who offered Snow White a perfect, red, tempting apple and when she bit from it she fell asleep for as long as it took for Prince Charming to show up on a white horse, kiss her deceivingly dead lips and save the day! She came to life, they got married and lived “happily, ever after!”

There is a reason they are called fairy tales… However, if we look at the symbolism of the evil step-mother disguised as a good, older woman, and her offering Snow White a beautiful red apple to eat, here we have the true LIFE LESSONS behind the fairy tale:

If it looks too good, it probably is.
Don’t trust strangers no matter how they look.
Don’t “bite” into things, no matter how tempting they look on the surface. This could apply to an investment too good to be true, to love at the first “email” with a widower, who has a child and assures you YOU are most definitely his soul mate (because he hacked into your bank account and also his heart told him you own your home)

Books and their covers… Honestly, the lesson I learned is to only purchase books stripped of covers! Not as pretty but who cares if the story is good?

Morgen: Some writers say that Dan Brown and JK Rowling aren’t great writers but that they tell a good story. That’s the important thing. Thank you, Rodica.

Rodica is the single mother of two adult daughters, and currently lives in Central Pennsylvania with her three rescued dogs and an African Grey parrot.

She holds a B.A. in English and Romanian from the University of Bucharest. She has worked as a translator and executive assistant at the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest before defecting from Romania in 1981.

In the U.S. she showed her entrepreneurial spirit by owning several businesses, including Rodica’s Natural Therapies in Wyncote, PA.

She completed her M.S. in Counseling and Clinical Psychology in 2012 and is working as a contractor for an online Counseling Company, Proven Therapy (https://www.proventherapy.com/Rodica).

Rodica’s websites are:

http://www.rodicamihalis.wordpress.com: the birthplace of The Gypsy Saw Two Lives, under the name of ‘Memoirs from My Two Lives’. Rodica then started to post practical ideas which are being well-received.
http://www.lifewithbblola.wordpress.com: is about Rodica’s puppy Lola and the other two rescued dogs who are my companions and also Max, my super intelligent African Grey parrot. (Morgen: I feature an African Grey in my novel The Serial Dater’s Shopping List) 🙂

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