Monday, July 16, 2007
Lose the Blurbs, Add Some Stars?
CA Barron in the Guardian blog suggests that book publishers dispense with uniformly hyperbolic blurbs on their books and instead move to a rating system like that of Rotten Tomatoes for films or Robert Parker for wines: "To have 2005's 206,000 books published in the UK, and 172,000 in the US, all shrieking superlatives at us seems counter-productive. Let us first savour and judge books -- like films and wine -- with our own brains, hearts and palates."
Commenter BillyMills likes the idea, and also suggests more honest blurbs, such as: "This is XXX's second novel. Due to contractual stipulations, it's much like his/her first novel" and "This is our entry in the great 9/11 novel sweepstakes." He also finds refreshing the candidness of some historical reviews, as "'One would imagine this piece to be the work of a drunken savage'. -- Voltaire, 1768 (of Hamlet)."
Labels: book reviews, book selling, guardian, publishing, rankings, ratings
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Unfinished Book Shame?
Guy Dammann at the Guardian's book blog takes on a topic that's oft discussed among readers and librarians: Is it OK to stop reading a book?:
"Books ... are somehow allowed to bully us, using nothing but our own reflected guilt to do so. They sit on our shelves, or in piles on our desks and bedside tables, gathering dust and issuing gentle reproaches with every glance, a literary equivalent of water torture."
He offers his strategy for deciding whether to read a non-fiction book, and how much of it to read; the reader comments that follow the essay offer lots more strategies, ideas, and opinions (some of which apply to fiction, too) and names of books they chose not to finish.
Labels: bookselling, guardian, reading
