Suggested by Jennysbooks:
Something I’ve been thinking about lately: “What words/phrases in a blurb make a book irresistible? What words/phrases will make you put the book back down immediately?”
I admit that I am under the blurb's spell. I buy at least one book a month; just doing my part to keep my local bookstore in business. I love to browse in bookstores looking at titles and reading blurbs and regularly buy books based on a good blurb. One I recently finished, The Wizard of the Crow, I bought based solely on the blurb. Now that I look at it, it's not that great a blurb:
Commencing in "our times" and set in the fictional "Free Republic of Aburiria," Wizard of the Crow dramatized with corrosive humor and keenness of observation a battle for control of the souls of the Aburirian people. Fashioning the stories of the powerful and the ordinary into a dazzling mosaic, this magnificent novel reveals humanity in all its endlessly surprising complexity.The blurb also mentions that the author has lived the last twenty years in exile from his native Kenya which grabbed my attention. That may have done it.
One of my all time favorite books is The Theory of War by Joan Brady, which I bought from the remainder table at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books in San Francisco based entirely on the on the cover flap blurb:
The narrator of this searing novel is the grand-daughter of a slave.
Her grandfather, Jonathan Carrick, was a white man. He was sold just after the Civil War to a struggling Kansas tobacco farmer--a common enough practice in those days when black slaves were no longer legal and the children of destitute soldiers were being marketed. You could pick up a white kid cheap, and Jonathan, only four years old, went for fifteen dollars.To be honest, that blurb shocked me. I had no choice but to buy The Theory of War; I'm glad I did.
Blurbs that turn me away from a book use words and phrases like "empowering," "coming-of-age," "journey of self-discovery," "place in the world," "quirky," "family dynamics." It a blurb makes a book sound like chick-lit or like lad-lit the bookstore loses a sale. If Dave Eggers likes it, forget it. That guy bugs me. If it's all quotes from reviews with no blurb at all, not a chance.
7 comments:
Oh you don't take any prisoners do you?! :) Agree with words like empowering etc. makes me automatically think it won't be!
I'm a bit of a blurb-a-holic myself, so I'm glad you brought it up. I've been known to buy more than a few books based on the blurbs.
Oh, I'm right there with you on Dave Eggers. (Wait--that sounds wrong.)
I agree with you about Dave Eggers. (Better.) I used Jodi Picoult and Stephanie Meyer as my would-never-pick-up-that-book endorsers, but I had completely forgotten how much I dislike Eggers.
"Family dynamics" puts me off. And "sizzling attraction" is another phrase that makes me run a mile.
Booking through Blurbs
"Chick lit" is still gum to me (I'd rather have the gum). Reviews only? Depends where they're from. Anything "empowering" or "bold" stays right where it is.
novelinsights, I'll take prisoners. ;-) But you won't find me reading anything by Mr. Eggers anytime soon.
Andi, I like taking a risk with books now and then. Now that I can trade stuff on Paperbackswap.com I take even more chances.
Eveningreader, I think I'm much more likely to skip a book based on an author blurb than to pick one up.
gautami, "Sizzling" is a red flag word to me as well.
ds, Really anything with a single word in quotes is bad. If they can't feature a longer quote than that, I have to wonder how long they searched for the one good word.
Blurbs do give quick overview of what the books are about, but I agree with your comment on my blog that the older books have more well-written blurbs.
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