Interesting Reading Elsewhere--Book Blurbs at The Passive Voice
Over at THE PASSIVE GUY blog there is an interesting piece by Tad Crawford on his search for book blurbs. It is worth your time and you can read it here.
An interesting piece, but I honestly pay no attention to book blurbs anymore. They are invariably positive, because a publisher will understandably not want to throw a negative blurb on there. And because the publisher *really* wants to convince you to buy the book, you'll find out that the book is a masterpiece, beautifully crafted, with a thrilling plot that twists and turns and engaging characters, as well as brilliant writing that reads like [Famous Author] meets [Another Famous Author/A Staple of Some Foreign Culture]... even if a book takes 200 pages to go nowhere, like Paul Auster's CITY OF GLASS.
Sad thing is, this carries over into book reviewing. I might write an article about it some day, but we are in desperate need of more honesty in the book reviewing field. Because at the rate the genre is being transcended, there won't be a genre to transcend by this time next year.
An interesting piece, but I honestly pay no attention to book blurbs anymore. They are invariably positive, because a publisher will understandably not want to throw a negative blurb on there. And because the publisher *really* wants to convince you to buy the book, you'll find out that the book is a masterpiece, beautifully crafted, with a thrilling plot that twists and turns and engaging characters, as well as brilliant writing that reads like [Famous Author] meets [Another Famous Author/A Staple of Some Foreign Culture]... even if a book takes 200 pages to go nowhere, like Paul Auster's CITY OF GLASS.
ReplyDeleteSad thing is, this carries over into book reviewing. I might write an article about it some day, but we are in desperate need of more honesty in the book reviewing field. Because at the rate the genre is being transcended, there won't be a genre to transcend by this time next year.