Category: publishing

Do blurbs sell books, or are they simply a feel-good way for writers to show support to other writers? And is Gary Shteyngart simply a blurb whore? A YouTube investigation reveals all.

“Although Steinbeck was praised by the committee “for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception” when his win was announced, the newly declassified documents show he was actually chosen as the best of a bad lot.”

Daniel Mendelsohn and Laura Miller toss around the year’s literary disappointments (no bogus memoirs exposed!), shenanigans (lots of bogus reader reviews exposed), and the nature of bad reviews.

“A hundred years after his birth, Patrick White (1912-1990) remains Australia’s only Nobel laureate for Literature (in 1973), but he’s as unknown to most readers as his name is nondescript. Though it rightly inducted him into the company of Faulkner, Hemingway, Beckett, and Bellow, White’s Nobel has done little to ensure the longevity of the work that earned it.”

“It feels like a throwback to an earlier era at the Orange County Register, where a first-time newspaper owner is defying conventional wisdom by spending heavily to expand the printed edition and playing down digital formats.”

“Mary Talbot’s Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, which was illustrated by her husband Bryan, a veteran of the comic genre, won biography of the year while Hilary Mantel won the novel award for Bring Up the Bodies; Francesca Segal won first novel for The Innocents; Kathleen Jamie’s The Overhaul came first in poetry, and Sally Gardner’s Maggot Moon was named children’s book of the year.

The Wishing Tree “a sort of grimly whimsical morality tale, somewhere between Alice In Wonderland, Don Quixote, and To Kill a Mockingbird.” (It is also a rather egregious case of regifting.)

“The choice to go to graduate school may only offer the illusion of comfort and security–these days it’s an arduous path that only rarely leads to tenure; for the unwary it’s a wild and expensive gamble with no guarantee of security.”

“It’s counterintuitive, but qualities that make you likable and popular in real life — good looks, wild success, happy marriage, lovely home, healthy confidence — will make a reader despise you. The more of a wreck you are from the start, the more the audience is hooked.”

According to a quick database search, “spoiler alert” occurred 39 times in the print edition of The New York Times in 2012, up from 31 in 2011, while “double down” occurred 59 times, up from 38.