TIFITLWIW: Don't judge a book by its cover

Book covers are very important to me. When I'm buying series, they all must have the same cover. I have the three Howl's Moving Castle books, but two have these  covers and one (the middle one, which makes it worse) has this one. It drives me nuts (I think at least one was a gift, and/or I couldn't find the last one with the proper cover and I didn't want to wait to read it). But I don't want to spend extra money to replace it. #firstworldproblems

Anyway, I came across some books with, shall we say, interesting covers.

Quick, guess what this book is about! Well, there's a sword and a flower, plus that font and color choices... Maybe it's a historical bodice-ripper romance novel? Well, I don't know about the romance, but judging by the book's Wikipedia entry, it's a historical novel about ancient Rome. It does not sound like it matches the cover at all.

Check this guy out too:

I know Chaim Potok as the author of The Chosen (I saw the movie but haven't read anything by him), so I know it's probably a great work of fiction. This cover kinda sucks though. It's just so painfully Eighties. Like, if this cover had a lady on it in addition to the pensive main guy, I'd assume it was another one of those White Couple With Tragic Love and Angst books. However, I opened it to find...

It was signed by the author. Cute this face again.

TIFITLWIW: Surprise stamp

So I was going though my iPad pictures when I found this one that I had totally forgotten about:

 It's a wee little striding man in a hat, stamped on the bottom of a book. I just found it by accident. It's probably about an inch high. I think it may be a printer's mark? I don't even remember what book this was. Anyway, I thought it was cute.

UPDATE: I found another one, and it's the logo for Simon & Schuster. I'm guessing they stamp the bottom of all their hardcover books. Neat. 

FURTHER UPDATE: Apparently it's also the logo for Prentice Hall??? Are both owned by the same publishing house? I'm so confused. Anyway, PH's logo shows the striding man in greater detail. He's actually a farmer sowing seed, like in a field or something. The hand behind him is flinging the seed behind him, while his other hand reaches into a pouch slung in front of his body. I guess it's a metaphor for spreading knowledge which sprouts in readers' mind or something. idk. I'm only 99% sure it's the same logo.

TIFITLWIW: Things found in books 3

Mini Disneyland playing card. It's probably like 2 inches long. Pen included for scale. I don't remember what book I found this in.

Bulletins for the Campus Hill Church. Interesting to see how the logos and fonts changed (probably because of the change in pastors). I like the old rainbow church logo but can see why they changed it. These were found inside religious books, naturally.

Despite how book-oriented I am, I strangely was never into bookplates and marking "my" books. I can understand the appeal and the usefulness, especially if you lend your books out to friends a lot. I do find most bookplates cute, but it just comes off as super possessive to me. Why be so desperate to mark your books as yours? It comes off as very "it's MINE!!!!" to me. Plus if you want to give them away or sell them later you have to take them out or force the buyer to have a book with your name in it (this weirds me out since I'm kind of a private person). So while a lot of the bookplates found in the donated books are cute, they are a huge pain in the nether regions to remove. A lot of them won't come off, so I have to leave them in the books. I'll probably cover them with a blank sticker label or something. Anyway this one has a squirrel on it.