A few months ago I was perusing around my former teacher's bookshelf, which was full of middle school children's books. I looked at each one by one. If the title interested me, I'd read the back cover summary. Then I'd shelve it and move on. Which did I end up reading entirely? The one that didn't have a back cover summary and was short enough for me to breeze through it simply so I could figure out what it was about. It was pretty good, about a kid learning to accept his Native American heritage. So there you have it, laziness is what gets me to read a book.
If a book has an interesting title, I will be more likely to consider buying it, even if it wasn't a book I was originally planning to get.
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Was the book "The Education of Little Tree", because it sounds pretty much like it may have been? If so, I have some really nasty news for you on that one. If not then I don't.
Scenery Porn on a cover will usually make me look twice, and the blurb talking about the world is another hook.
Professional Smartass
I never go further than the cover if it features a Shirtless Scene.
Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.
I bought "1939" by David Gelerntner (about the 1939 Worlds Fair in NYC) based on a brilliantly phrased endorsement on the back cover: "I was there ... This is it!!! - Ray Bradbury". The book was indeed quite good due mainly to its documentary aspects, and improved by the associated fiction, but that six word blurb convinced me to buy the book, and after I read it made me want to hop a plane to LA to get Bradbury to autograph it! What a writer.
Nope. It took place in the modern day. I think the kid's name was Hawk or something. I'd look up the title again, but they recently moved the bookshelf from that classroom so I can't peruse it anymore.
iRidescence
I have the same opinion. Especially if it's in a photograph-style. For some reason, it raises my Mary Sue alarms. And That's Terrible.
Otherwise I go away from covers that imply romance/sex (even if there is no people on the cover) because I dislike that genre.
antic disposition
^^^On a similar note, I decided to buy Cronopios and Famas rather than Final Exam (both by Julio Cortazar) because the former had this delightful quote by Pablo Neruda as its blurb: "Anyone who doesn't read Cortázar is doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who has never tasted peaches. He would quietly become sadder... and, probably, little by little, he would lose his hair." How could I resist?
"Doctor Who means never having to say you're kidding." - Bocaj
Goofy fonts, smiling people on the cover. I don't like covers that have people on them at all, honestly.
"Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy. They are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy."