Had a play with gradient mapping to liven these shots up. The colour versions were a bit ordinary, so tried to process some atmosphere into them. I’m sure some people with laothe these kinds of shots but what do you think:
These would probably work well for Book Covers but as standalone images they wouldn’t be to my taste to be honest, its hard to look beyond the processing to the actual image; though I can see arguably that as you say the originals needed to be livened up.