Silly Blurbs

These are the blurbs that fry men's souls. Publishers put blurbs - admiring statements by other writers or snippets from favorable reviews - on a book's cover to entice you into buying the book, but sometimes the blurbs are so overwritten or pretentious or just dumb that you find yourself laughing out loud in the middle of a quiet bookstore. Here are some of them. I'm starting this page out with a few extraordinarily silly blurbs that I've come across myself. If you have any to add to the collection, please e-mail them to me at david@dvorkin.com. Tell me if you want credit, and I'll include your name, e-mail address, and a link to your home page. Or let me know that you want anonymity, and there'll be nothing here to identify you. Trying Too Hard "Paul Park is a remarkable talent with a clarity of style that affords a view of mysterious waters." Lucius Shepard, quoted on the cover of Paul Park's novel Celestis. Pride of place because this is the blurb that gave me the idea for this page. "A book graced with his achingly lovely sentences, ... " The New York Review of Science Fiction, quoted on the cover of Gene Wolfe's novel Caldé of the Long Sun, referring to the Wolfe novel Nightside the Long Sun. "One of the best-built and most lived-in futures in science fiction." The Chicago Sun-Times, quoted on the cover of C. J. Cherryh's novel Finity's End. "Precariously poised stories." Someone anonymous at Houghton Mifflin, blurbing on the cover of Harlan Ellison's collection Slippage. "An audacious act of the imagination." The New York Times Book Review, quoted on the cover of Margaret Wander Bonanno's novel Preternatural. "A colorful feast for the crime buff's ear." The Boston Sunday Herald, quoted in the paperback edition of Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty. So crime buffs read with their ears! Thanks for Trying to Help "This looks much like the next big fantasy series." Piers Anthony's blurb for Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. "Intellectually neat, emotionally satisfying, and entirely unexpected." The New York Times, quoted on the back of Melissa Scott's Burning Bright, referring to the Scott novel Dreamships.