: Re: Are illustrations in novels frowned upon? Lately I've been thinking that I don't know of a single novel that has illustrations in it. I've tried finding out the reason why, and came across

Illustrations tend to be pretty popular in fantasy and (to a lesser degree) sci-fi books - authors often include maps to give people an idea about the geography of the worlds they've created.

However, I'm generally not a fan of such things. There's a few reasons for this:

1) The illustration quality is often poor - paperback books especially are rarely printed on high-quality paper, and the monochrome printing process tends to destroy any finer detail, especially when it comes to older books from the 70s and 80s

2) They can be physically difficult to view. Again, with paperback books in particular, pages are generally viewed "curved" thanks to the way they're all glued together. The only way to make a page flat is to break the spine of the book!

3) The illustrations rarely add anything "extra" to the story

4) Having to refer back to the illustrations breaks you out of the story

5) They can actively conflict with my "internal" visualisations

(The final point also applies to book covers - as I understand it, these are often produced by artists who may only have a brief description or a few sample pages from the book, and hence can be wildly inaccurate. A recent discussion over on Ars Technica, about the Wheel of Time series threw up the fact that one cover features a character who was later completely written out of the story!)

It's not just illustrations - I've read the Lord of the Rings books many times since I was a child, but I've never once made a serious effort to sing or recite the various songs and poems. In fact, I usually just skip them altogether!

In general, I view illustrations and other "non-story" elements to be like DVD extras. It's nice that they've been included, but it's rare that I'm interested enough to spend time looking at them.

If anything, I tend to think that they've been included more for the author's benefit than the reader!

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: Re: Are illustrations in novels frowned upon? Lately I've been thinking that I don't know of a single novel that has illustrations in it. I've tried finding out the reason why, and came across

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