The authors Jonathan Franzen and Jennifer Weiner have been duking it out over the issue of seriousness since 2010, with Weiner criticising the ‘Franzenfrenzy’ that greeted the publication of his novel Freedom. In her eyes, women writing about domestic situations were seen as limited in their appeal, but when Franzen ‘writes a book about a family … we are told this is a book about America’. The three mamaloshen terms were beshert (meaning “meant to be,” often as a descriptor of a loved one), tsuris (meaning “troubles”), and shanda (which is a good way to describe someone who gives tsuris to your beshert.)

Curb Your Enthusiasm review – Larry’s back, and funnier than Curb Your Enthusiasm review – Larry’s back, and funnier than

I had never thought about how the blurb is actually a really well thought paragraph, it is usually what makes you part with your cash -how is it set out, is it talking to you, what language is used, are you been asked a question -it is all so interesting and really makes you think about books are marketedit can be easy to forget that a potential reader hasn’t read it: they don’t know anything about it. You can’t sell them the experience of the book – you have to sell them the expectation of reading it; the idea of it. And that’s when a c

Killer crabs and bad leprechauns: how the best book blurbs

Hooray! Publishers (and reviewers), take note. I never could understand ‘incandescent’. Even light bulbs aren’t incandescent anymore. And while we’re at it, I’d like to blue-pencil the noun phrases ‘rite of passage’, ‘coming of age’ and ‘richly woven tapestry’. The American usage of the word “blurb” is for advance review quotes that fellow authors contribute for inclusion on the cover. I didn’t realize I used the word interchangeably for either meaning; in the UK, one might call such a quote a “puff.” I really liked this book, what would have been great was a reading list of the books mentioned at the end along with the bibliography , that would have taken it to five stars. Wilder enjoys a good digression. She is a huge Orwell fan, so she spends some time on his rules of writing. She discusses the rest of the outside of the book. What makes a good cover? What about illustrations on the cover? Do the American kind of blurbs sell books? She also gives a bunch of hints on writing blurbs which are actually hints on good writing.

Reviews

t.s. eliot on louis macneice: ‘his work is intelligible but unpopular, and has the pride and modesty of things that endure.’ First, an English/American translation. In America a "blurb" is a quote or remark by an author or celebrity that appears on a book cover. Stephen King is famous for blurbing many books. In England, a "blurb" is the description of the book that appears on the cover. This book is about the English kind of blurbs. Writers, then, mostly stay clear of blurbing their blurbers. But is there something more subtle going on? When Ellis called Frey's book "a heartbreaking memoir", was he making a reference to Dave Eggers' memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius? Possibly not. But I'll come to Eggers' book in a moment: I think it's the most lavishly blurbed book I've ever seen. She gives some examples of terrible real-life blurbs which have genuinely been used e.g. for a recent edition of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: "Mom's fishing for husbands - but the girls are hunting for love" and other blurbs which, in contrast, do their job perfectly: distilling the essence of the book into a few sentences while still leaving you thirsty for more. George Orwell worried over his blurbs in detail with his editor, and his original description of Nineteen Eighty-Four as “the history of a revolution that went wrong” is still used on many editions today. The Italian author Roberto Calasso, who beautifully dubbed the blurb “a letter to a stranger”, wrote hundreds of blurbs for the publishing company Adelphi, and even produced a book of them. TS Eliot noted “what a difficult art blurb-writing is”, and sweated over countless blurbs for Faber – although I doubt his interpretation of Robert Graves’s The White Goddess as “a prodigious, monstrous, stupefying, indescribable book” would get past a marketing department today.