Booking Through Thursday's question this week is about blurbs you find irresistible. They're talking about certain words or phrases that get you to pick up a book, but for me they don't really work that way. I think I've already picked up the book because I've heard or read about it or am familiar with the author. I think I tend to be ore impressed by the writer of the blurb and even then it would have to be more than one. And it has to be for that book! Many times a writer will get some great blurbs for an earlier book that the publisher keeps slapping on every subsequent book. I hate that.
But if I turn over a book and it has four or five glowing blurbs from authors I respect it definitely adds something.
NOT review blurbs from other media. I don't even glance at those. It always cracks me up that a publisher puts something like three pages of these kind of blurbs in genre paperbacks. "THRILLING!" -Kansas Tribune. Really? The entire staff of the Kansas Trib found this series mystery "thrilling?" It's one word for crying out loud. How do I know it didn't come from a sentence that said "This formulaic nonsense was thrilling in it's ineptitude!"
So no, most blurbs don't work on me and certain words or phrases don't have much impact. Of course, the best one I've read lately is from Phil Plait's new one which is in fact on my To Be Read pile. Daniel H. Wilson said of it:
"Reading this book is like being punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, yet oddly exhilarating."
Now that's a blurb!
