 Hello everybody and welcome to my mess. I mean I mean desk. I want to do a little video about drawing the covers from my favorite books. So the rules are that they have to have five stars on my Goodreads and I don't really want to do graphic novels or anything like that so I'm sort of dedicating this to fiction and no non-fiction. These are most of my five star rated books and I will draw a little version of them and talk about the books as I go. So if you're into that kind of thing then stick around. Okay so let's begin. The first five star read that I chose was The Shining. This is one of my favorite books because it's one of the first horrors that I ever read and it opened up the world of Stephen King to me and I really love this book. It's so much deeper than you first assume it would be and I really love the characters in it. What I love about Stephen King is he really tells stories that are character driven and then the horror is just kind of like an added bonus. It seems like the characters come first and then the horror elements just build up these characters. It's so good. So this story is about a family down on their luck and they go to a hotel where the main character, well one of the main characters Jack Torrance, he becomes a caretaker as it closes down over winter. You guys are probably quite familiar with this story. It was quite famous and it has a film and it has miniseries and loads of different things but obviously he wants to write a novel of his own and he becomes stir crazy but because actually the hotel itself is rather evil and our main character, the young boy Danny, he has a gift called The Shining where he can hear people's thoughts and see ghosts and things and it's a really cool story and I think there's so much more to it and the characters have so much more to it than the film does even though I love the film as well. I just think it's a great read and if you guys have never read it you should definitely give it a go if you like horror. Yeah so I drew this image and as it's the first one I did I kind of keep going back and fixing it throughout this process because I didn't like the way it turned out and I wanted to stay true to the covers. I know there's a lot of ranger covers out there for popular books so I wanted to stay true to the ones that I remember being on the cover of the book that I read because it just made more sense, it was more personal to me. So the next book that I read was Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonoghan and I think it's Kurt Vonoghan, correct me if I'm wrong in pronouncing his name. It's basically a book that takes place through non-linear timelines so we jump ahead and back in time and it centres on the firebombing of Dresden during World War II and about the main character being in World War II but then also jumping forward to his life now and how he deals with PTSD and fear but I also think it has like a sci-fi element to it which I don't really want to explain unless you read the book but it sort of it sort of like makes you think is it happening is it not happening and I just thought it was such a brilliantly well-written book about PTSD and fear and guilt it's just a brilliantly well-written book and the cover is kind of orange but I didn't I didn't I couldn't find my orange Posca pens. I used this bright pink luminous colour because I think the orange I have anyway doesn't really reflect the kind of comical style that they were going for for this cover so I think it turned out well I also go back in and fix all the typography with this because I think the first few that I did just the typography I was like what is happening here. The next book I chose is Pichinko by Minjin Lee and it follows generations of one family as they live through the occupation of Korea by Japan and through World War II and beyond it. It's basically about a single family and how they deal with a lot of situations during the war how they deal with moving from Korea to Japan and trying to make a life there and then the generations of the different people throughout the family and it's so good I love this book I couldn't put it down. It does move quite fast from character to character but I think it's so interesting and if you like historical fiction then this is definitely a really good it's quite gruelling but then it's also like lovely in some senses so I think you just need to read it if you're into Korean and Japanese culture but also historical fiction about World War II and it gives a lot of information and some things that I didn't really know before. I read this book so it also opens up your horizons and I think that is kind of a constant theme for my five-star reads. A lot of them have to deal with a lot of issues and I think it's probably hard to rate a book down if it deals with certain themes very well and I think this book is one of those that does this so it's very good and that's all I'm gonna say. I think this is probably one of my favorite covers that I do because I just really like the way it turned out. Obviously all the credit goes to the artists of the original books because I'm just copying the covers but in miniature form so I can't take credit for the design or layout of these books but I think they look really intriguing together and that's why I wanted to do this and it also helps me like discuss each of the books. So the next book I chose was Noughts and Crosses by Mallory Blackman. It's a beautiful book about social and class divides and it focuses on a relationship that is sort of doomed from the start because of the divides between these two families and it's such a good book. I read this when I was a teenager and it hit me so hard and I think it probably helped develop my sense of the world from a young age. I know I just think it's such a brilliant book and if you haven't read it I would definitely give it a go. I'm probably gonna say definitely give it a go for all of these books though because they're all my five-star reads so yeah. I recommend all of these books. I guess it just depends if it's the type of book that you're into. There was not much to do about this book cover I think I go back in and change the the nought at the top because it was supposed to be orange and obviously I said before I couldn't find my orange so I changed it to orange and I move it slightly up to give some room for that title. The next book I chose was the Goldfinch and this features a kind of a tear in the front cover and through it you can see the painting that is the Goldfinch which is what this story revolves around. So the Goldfinch is about a character called Theodeca who survives an accident that kills his mother and I think it's a lot to do with survivors guilt and loss to begin with and it's so beautifully written and it just it stems from like him kind of picking up this painting from a gallery and holding on to it and it and we follow him as he grows up and how he deals with having this painting and but it's more about his life and how he deals with grief and it's just oh it's just hauntingly beautiful. So I definitely recommend this book. I really enjoyed this one because I actually handmade a little front cover and ripped out where you can see the Goldfinch through the paper. I said the Pachinko one was my favourite but I think this is also like a close second or maybe even my favourite. Maybe I lied. Maybe I'm wrong guys. I just really like the way that feels and looks. The next book I chose was the Estonishing Colour of After. I have to give a trigger warning to this book because it is about suicide so it follows a young girl whose mother has died by suicide and it's about grief and how she deals with the loss of her mother but it's so sensitively done because I think the author also experienced something similar in her own life but it stands on to the main character going to Taiwan and meeting her grandparents for the first time and discovering her culture and learning things about her mother but it also has sort of a fantastical element to it because she keeps seeing this bird and she thinks this bird is reincarnation of her mother and it's just sort of about dealing with her own grief and how she overcomes it and learns to accept what's happened and develop as a person herself and it's really is it's a very hard book to read but it's so beautifully done and I just I really love this book so if you like to read sad books then this one is for you. If you don't like sad books then definitely give this one a miss. So the cover kind of had like a gradient to it and I couldn't really do that with the paint pens I was trying to see how I could give that effect by maybe smudging it or doing different stuff so in the end I just layered different colors over and gave this sort of like furry effect and I think it kind of works because the bird on the cover covers it up anyway and I really like the way this one turned out I think just because this cover is beautiful anyway I really like the typography of it so it has this swirling bird and then it has the typography is kind of swirling across it and fits into the shape of the bird and I just think it's really well done and it also represents very nicely the imagery within the book because it's so colorfully written and if you've read this book you probably know what I mean it's just like a lot of similes a lot of metaphors but really well done. The next book I chose is The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas and it is about a girl who witnesses the fatal shooting of her friend by a police officer and it deals with the aftermath of that and how she learns to grow in this society where something like this has happened to her and how she deals with the aftermath of her friend's death. It is quite a difficult read but I think it really helps define how I feel on certain subjects. I think the main takeaway from this book is that if you think something is wrong or if you think somebody is saying something wrong and you should speak out and I think that's something that I really took away and learn from this book and I think that's a very strong thing to take away from a book that your reading is a lesson and it's a really good book if you enjoy this type of story then feel free to read it and let me know what you think. The next book I chose follows similar themes but is a completely different tale. It's to kill a mockingbird maybe some of you had to read it in high school or something I never did. I read it well into my 20s and it was such a beautifully written book and I don't know what else to say about it really because I think everyone has probably read this. It deals a lot with themes of racism and judging people without knowing them. The characters are really well done and I think it's so well written and you just feel like you're in this moment of time. It's like a time capsule and I just think it's so well done. Yeah so this cover I remember I had the book and it was this cover where it was the tree I think where they messaged Bo Radley in it. I can't really remember what the tree was about but yeah it focuses on the tree and I don't really think that this cover needs to do too much just to kill a mockingbird is such a famous book that probably all it really needed was the title anyway. The next book I chose was Horns by Joe Hill and this follows the murder of a woman and you find out that everybody thinks it's the main character that you follow who has killed her and how he deals with this this scrutiny that he feels and everyone thinks he's done this and he actually starts to grow horns and becomes quite devilish and it's a really fantastical read but it's more to it than that it's about true love and what you would do and what you would do to save someone that you truly love. I think it just struck me it kind of it surprised me a lot of how it wasn't really just about this like devil mad walking around doing evil things it was about how what people think about you could maybe turn you into that and I really felt this book I think is a really good read obviously that's why it's on this list and you should give it a whirl if you like darker themes in books it's not really a horror per se but it does have horror elements in it and it deals with murder and yeah. I think as well it's worth mentioning if you don't know this Joe Hill is Stephen King's son and I think that's a really interesting fact that I found out quite later on because I read all the locking key comics which I highly suggest if you haven't read those and you like comics and then I found out that he was Stephen King's son and I was like word I love Stephen King and it was all it all came together for me so the next book I picked was a handful of dust this is another book that I picked up off the shelf on a whim and it surprised me at how much I enjoyed it it's a satire of English life where all the characters are rich and really completely lack morals and shock you and it's such I can't explain this book it's so hard to go into detail but it's just about a woman who is bored with her life and kind of cheats on her husband and then he wants a divorce and he has to capture out and it's a time capsule of that time in England and I think it's like the 1930s maybe a little bit later and just how he deals with it and it doesn't yeah it kind of all goes downhill for the main character who who sneaks up on you as well you don't even realize he's the main character until he is and it's a great story I really liked it it was fun but also shocking and sad and pretty mesmerizing I drew this weird little horse because on the cover there's somebody horse riding and all these books are really small so all the details were actually really hard to do it kind of looks bigger on the screen than it is but all of these books were smaller than hands so everything I had to do was like that doesn't look good but when I zoomed out I was like that looks good I don't know I think zoomed in the details are a bit like blobs but then you come out again you're like actually that kind of looks cool and I really like the way that all the books look together you can see me going back in with the orange to go and do that naught or not across is some justice rather than just being a pink splodge I then went on to draw another book and it is Turtles All the Way Down by John Green and I really like this cover it focuses more on typography but I really enjoyed doing this kind of orange swirl and then the typography after I think this one comes out really nicely as well Turtles is all about it's about a story about finding a future billionaire but then it's also about the main character more about how she lives her life and how she struggles with anxiety and having OCD I think it's a really good representation of a character who has these kind of struggles and I think it was informative for me because I didn't know much about OCD and how she deals with this and how it becomes more of a problem throughout the book kind of takes over the story and then how she deals with that and the fallout of some of her actions that she takes it's a really good read and if you struggle with some of these things then I would say it has a trigger warning for that if you don't want to read about that kind of aspect but if you have those things and you haven't read this book and maybe it will help you relate to somebody else who has them it's a really good book and I think it's very well done and I think it's probably one of the best things John Green has written in my opinion everyone's going to shout at me the fall and the stars but I really preferred this to that book and the final book is a kind of historical fiction but a little bit more on the I don't want to say trashy side because it's not really but it's kind of more romance historical fiction to do with the Tudors and it's the Queen's Fall and it follows a who becomes Queen Mary's Fall but then ultimately Queen Elizabeth's Fall and it's just a really good twist on a story about the Tudor reign and I really enjoyed this book there's not much to say about it I think if you enjoy historical fiction about the Tudors then Philippa Gregory who's the author of this is probably the Queen of writing these stories I've probably read almost everything she's ever written I think this is one of my favorite and you've probably heard of one of her books The Other Blingo which is another favorite of mine which was made into a movie a few years ago a few years ago quite a long time ago actually now and yeah I struggled a bit with this book because I made the dress green which is obviously what it is on the cover and then on top is the author's name in yellow and I was like okay I need to go back and change just up a little bit in the end I like it I think the typography could be better done but hey I think it was overall a success and yeah it's the final book in these 12 books I wish I could have done more I think I will do more in the future because I really enjoyed doing this that's the final book let me know what you guys think have you read any of these books will you read any of these books let me know if you do I'm really excited to discuss books with people because it's obviously one of my main passions and these are just 12 of my favorite books so if you like this video let me know if you want more because I will definitely draw more books and that's basically it guys thanks for watching and I will see you next time hopefully please come back okay thank you bye