Is style or content more important in a book?

I had rarely expressed disdain, if at all, at a book because of its style until I started to read Black Gold: A Dark History of Coffee (this is not my example of a poorly published book). The author had abstained from a bibliography for ‘stylistic reasons’. This made no sense, even from his background as a journalist, as the impression the title gives is that it is a history book and should therefore follow the style of the history genre. Preferences for bibliographies aside, this stylistic omission greatly affected my opinion towards the content and I started to view it as academic, nay journalistic naivety. It was a bizarre twist; that the author's decision to go against what is the typical style of the genre - for stylistic reasons - should backfire.

Style for me up until this point had tended generally to operate in the more obvious manner by appealing to my sense of sight. And that meant the front cover. I have to admit I accused it of perhaps being shallow as ‘Content is [indubitably] King’. But reflection on the books I own reveals that I appreciate books in a different way with nice looking covers. Perhaps like an accessory!

Style creates impressions that content either lives up to or collapses under. The incident with Black Gold highlighted to me the more subtle but just as precarious side of the style/content relationship.

The slide show embedded in this post (from the Penguin blog) reminds me that B. S Johnson was famous for cutting out holes in the pages of his books so the reader could look ahead to a future event.

I think Style and Content need equal consideration on the many levels that exist; from the kerning to the cover.

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