Judging Books by Their (Back) Covers |
| Published: May 23, 2008, 12:21 pm |
| Tags: books and reviewing |
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On the Guardian’s theblogbooks, book reviewer Chris Power admits that even he sometimes chooses books by their covers. Not the front covers, but the back covers, which often consist of synopses or blurbs or both: The problem with your common or garden synopsis is that it boils off all the stuff that attracts me about fiction - style, wit, inventiveness, rhythm - and leaves the bare bones of plot and/or setting, which I couldn’t care less about. It makes no odds to me if a book’s set in Carthage, Highgate or on the moon, nor whether it revolves around a moneylender’s murder, a British ex-consul glugging mescal on the Day of the Dead, or the Holy Grail turning out to be Mary Magdalene; I just want to be stimulated by the writing. It’s not the “what”, as they say, but the “how”. There are ways around this, of course, even when the book is yet to be reviewed. One is the puff: get a famous stablemate or similar author to enthuse, e.g. [ Full article ] |
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