Covered with mosquito bites

[pegkerr]

but I've pulled out five huge Hefty bags of weeds from two of the gardens. Go me.

Thinking about the blurb I've promised to write. Thinking about blurbs in general. What about a blurb makes a book attractive to the targeted market? The identity of the author who is saying "it's good"? The only truism I can think of is that I've noticed that a real turn off for me when I read is a blurb is when the author says, "The best thing since Tolkien." (Somebody did this on the Pullman trilogy, btw.) First of all, just accept it: nobody's as good as Tolkien. And if they are good in their own way, they're going to be good in an entirely different way, and the comparison just seems nonsensical. When I read that on a book, it strikes me that the blurber is just lazy.

I remember reading in a review of the LOTR:FOTR movie and being very struck by a critic remarking that Tolkien to the field of fantasy is like Mount Fuji is to the craft of Japanese landscape painting: it's always there. You're either seeing something on the mountain slopes, or the mountain is there in the distance, or you don't see it at all because you're standing on it.

I think it's a combination of the identity of the person writing the blurb and what they say about it. I know that some writers "dilute" their value as a blurber by blurbing so many books, saying on all them "it's great!" until you just can't believe them any more. (I think that kind of happened with Steven King, although I'm not sure--I don't read any horror and so am not familiar with marketing in that field).

For those so inclined, send in the blurb on a wonderful book you found, where the blurb made you pick it up. What was it about the blurb that snagged your attention?

Cheers,
Peg

Comments

[aome.livejournal.com]

Are you speaking only of those blurbs where another author promotes the book? Or of the general summary blurbs that just are *part* of the book? (I'm guessing those are written by the author themselves, or the publicist? No idea....)

To be honest, I don't rely that much on those blurbs written by *other* authors, although if it's an author whose own work I've enjoyed, it catches my attention and I might also have a better sense of what *sort* of book it is (hoping that they would read and write in similar genres). I still usually rely mostly on reading the main "official" summary (what do you call that?) and flip through the book and read a few lines of actual text.

Hmmm... could you quote a favorite line? What would make *you* pick up this book you're trying to promote? If you were just telling a friend about it, in [however many] words or less, what would be the most important things you'd want to convey, to get them to read it? That you couldn't put it down? That the characters were engaging/real/delightful/fanciful/etc? The plot was original? Comforting? Suspenseful? Did the book make you think or cry or laugh?

I feel ridiculous saying these things to you, as I'm sure you've thought of them yourself. But I guess ... that's probably the approach I would take. I'd try to think of ways to promote the book to my friends if they gave me only a limited amount of space to do it, and pick out the things I felt were the most appealing and important to me personally (not 'commercially').

[titanic-days.livejournal.com]

I picked up a copy of Jonathan Coe's 'The Rotter's Club' purely because on the back of it was a bit of blurb written by Paul Merton, who is one of my favourite comedians. It said, 'Wonderful storytelling. It took me back to the 70s. And left me there. Help.'

[corinnethewise.livejournal.com]

I picked up Dragon Prince by Melanie Rawn from the library because of this blurb from Anne McCaffrey, who was my favorite author at the time.
"Marvelous...Impressive...Facinating...Melanie Rawn is good!"

[morganmalfoy.livejournal.com]

I don't trust Ebert because every movie gets two thumbs up. It's ridiculous. On the other hand, my favorite reviews/blurb are the midlength ones. I don't like things like "Excellent! A New Classic!" etc, because there is no reasoning. I like one or two specific positive things about the book in question, and that makes me want to read it.

-M

[darius.livejournal.com]

I think the most recent novel I got blurbed into was Karl Schroeder's Ventus, with Vernor Vinge saying it was ``a milestone in science fiction about nanotech and fine-grained distributed systems.'' That worked because I respect Vinge a great deal, distributed systems are something I know he knows about, and his earlier blurbs were mostly for good stuff. Of course, none of that's enough if the story inside doesn't look interesting -- it just got me to take a peek, which I'm glad it did.

(Hi, by the way... I enjoyed Emerald House Rising.)

[ex-mahoney365.livejournal.com]

I'd been meaning to read Raymond Chandler for a while (in which case I don't know if this counts, but), when I read a blurb for The Big Sleep to the effect of "Chandler writes like a slumming angel." I thought, 'really? how does that work out?' and bought it. I think that's the first blurb I've ever paid attention to, because it was brief, evocative, and, I hoped, in the spirit of Chandler's writing. If that makes any sense.

[serendipoz.livejournal.com]

I agree with the others that I tend to pick up books with blurbs from authors I enjoy (at the moment - Diana Wynne Jones or Dave Langford would at least make me stop and check the book closely.)

On the other hand I enjoy blurbs that are provocative rather than glowing, and I admire those that add humor.

And sometimes I just pick up the book because the art work is great. For some reason I like snow scenes, I know I bought three copies of a Mike Moorcock novel with a snow scene, and I just bought a remainder Anne Perry with a snow scene on the cover. Though that could be because it's summer.

[diony.livejournal.com]

I hope you don't mind a random reader posting comments...

Blurbs interest me the most when I know that I like what the blurbing author writes. I really love Pamela Dean's writing, for example, so anything she recommended I would be more inclined to check out. If I really /don't/ enjoy the blurbing author it doesn't rule out an interest in the book, but it does make me slightly more dubious.

The content of the blurb also matters - generic adjectives ('fabulous!') are uninformative, and unlikely superlatives (like your 'best thing since Tolkien' example) tend to leave me entirely cold.

on the "Best thing since Tolkien"

[(Anonymous)]

Another random reader (and this one without an LJ, even, so sorry for the Anonymous tag)

I don't, as a rule, take the "Best thing since Tolkien" comments seriously, since they are so frequently applied and so rarely borne out. One exception, and probably the most memorable blurb I've read, was from Judith Tarr on Elizabeth Moon's "Deed of Paksenarrion" -- "This is the Fourth Age as it has to have been". I had never read anything by Tarr or Moon when I saw that blurb, and generally tend to steer away from the warrior-woman type books, but that was enough to catch my interest. The longer blurb, which has more explicit comments on both the roots and originality of the story and its specific strengths (solid base in military knowledge, e.g) is also very good.

I remember checking out the book on the strength of that blurb, basically, and starting to read it immediately even though I had book reports due for school. "Paksenarrion" remains one of my favorite fantasy series still -- all thanks to a one-sentence blurb, basically.

Just thought I'd chime in...

-- yavanna

You like Pamela Dean's writing, too?

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Good taste! I love her books, too. Tam Lin is one of my favorite books of all time, and a real impetus in the writing of my second book, The Wild Swans, although by the time I had finished writing it, Terri Windling had ceased editing the Tor fairytales series and so I sold it to Warner instead. I had the very great pleasure of being in a Shakespeare reading group with Pamela for several years--she lives pretty close to me.

I mention Pamela in the afterward of The Wild Swans, because it was in her kitchen (at a Shakespeare reading meeting, actually) when she made the crucial comment that made that book's double strand structure all bloom inside my imagination.

And yes, she blurbed it.

Thanks for commenting.

Cheers,
Peg

Re: You like Pamela Dean's writing, too?

[diony.livejournal.com]

I picked up The Wild Swans (which I loved) because I had enjoyed Emerald House Rising, and I picked up that latter because AlexLit told me I might like it. I honestly didn't remember that Pamela Dean had blurbed it; how ironic!

I love Pamela Dean's writing, almost an embarassing amount; there is something about it which goes straight to the back of my brain and leaves me happily gibbering. Unfortunately, this means any sort of intelligent analysis of why her books work for me is completely impossible. "Gibber," I say, waving my arms enthusiastically. "Gibber."

I was very pleased to find your livejournal (via kijjohnson simply because I'm always so curious about the lives of people who make things, especially when they write books I enjoy.