Judging A Book? How do you do it?

I don't know about you, but I just caught myself doing something that I could have sworn I didn't do....

I was on goodreads.com going through the recent giveaways and as I scrolled down, I caught myself looking more at the cover than what the book was actually about. I always believed that saying "You cant judge a book by its cover".

In recent years, when money was tight, I would get on my nook and locate some of the free nook books. They are usually written by little to unknown authors just starting out, or offered free the 1st or 3rd book in a series to get you to buy the rest of the books (a ploy that I am guilty of buying into on more than one occasion). I tell you this little secret of mine, because many of the stories I have found on the free list have the same cover picture, or nearly the same. So I rarely paid any attention to the image for the books I downloaded.

Tonight however, as I lazily scrolled through the giveaways (another secret for my low budget months) I found myself gazing at the images first, not the descriptions. It got me thinking, do we really look at the cover images? Do we care?

Honestly, tonight...I would have to so yes. For example, if I saw a book with an images such as this:

I would automatically think this was a romance novel. I mean, the Eifel Tower?             

The elegent dress....but infact, it is a book about secrets, history and murder! 

(I requested a copy!! After I read the description)

Now this one:

This one I have a hard time considering seriously. Yes, the cover makes sense, however when I look at it, all I see is the cardboard guy with the red nose that lights up and goes "BUUUUUZZZZ"  at you when you hit the metal piece during the game "operation". I actually bi-passed this one several times just because of the rediculous cover. Of course if I read the book, it sounds as though the cover make perfect sense....I just cant take it seriously enough to want to read the book...makes me wonder what else it has in store.

 (It recieved a 3.5 rating on goodreads. Out of 119 readers, 28 readers gave it 5 stars, 34 readers gave it 4 stars and 31 readers gave it 3 stars. Less than 12 people give it 2 stars or less)  

Of course, my goal here is not to bash a book. NOT AT ALL. But I wanted to pose a question for you...

Do you judge your books by their covers? Have you, like I did, discredited a book, because of the cover that was chosen to represent the book as a whole?

I would love your feedback to see where you stand on this topic.