Misc.

    A busy family life and other commitments often pull me away from my two blogs (and that's as it should be), and the last few days have seen just that happening, so planned posts have not materialised yet and books I'd expected to have finished by now are languishing, neglected - though that's no comment on them, just my lack of reading time.

    Sometimes I leave the computer behind to go off and do bookish things, and last Friday saw me at the launch of Hazel McHaffie's new novel, Remember Remember, while later this week I'm away for the day with planned visits to "places of interest for booklovers". More of that anon.

    But for now, I picked up a novel yesterday intending just to have a quick browse, a look at the first page or so, but I got so engrossed in it that I've gone on reading. Dark Matter by Michelle Paver won't be out until October so I hesitate to say too much about it for fear of tantalising you unduly when you'll have a long wait for it, but so far, so very good indeed!

    Last but not least today, we often talk here about book covers, but how about the blurb which goes on them? Who writes it, how is it done, how successfully does it convey the essence of a book to a potential reader? Here is a very interesting piece on just that subject, one written by someone on the inside - James Spackman of Sceptre.

Comments

[Dark Puss]

Dark Matter not out yet? NASA begs to differ. The fantastic Chandra X-ray mission has come up with some pretty convincing evidence for it. There is a good introduction to Dark Matter and how we might observe its effects here.

[Cornflower]

Just to 'tease the cat' a bit more, the main character in the book is a physicist ...

[Dark Puss]

Blurbs - I can't say I read them, at least not intentionally. Too often taken out of context from other articles and in many cases "pushing" some aspect of a book that doesn't interest me. I never let them conciously affect my decision to read a book, or vice versa. Thank you for the link to an interesting post from Spackman.

[Dark Puss]

Oh! Is she a clever sexy one like me?

[m]

How interesting and I see that he picked out Chris Cleave's The Other Hand as a fine example. Can't argue with the salesfigures, of course ... it obviously worked this time ... but I wonder how many of those readers, having fallen for the overblown hype on this bookjacket, will bother buying Cleave's next book? If you look at the Amazon reviews there's a strong sense of readers feeling they were conned!
The trouble with personal appeals to buy this book, it's so special - and the titlepage, if remember rightly was particularly sick-making with its "Dear reader, you don't know me ..." appeal from the publisher ... is that we buy the book with heightened expectations. I don't suppose I was their target audience - I read it reluctantly for a book group and it was easily the worst book that I read Iast year. (Publisher: please feel to quote me!) But it was the hype on the jacket that makes it stick in my mind, not as a book that I didn't much enjoy, but as an author I wouldn't touch again with a bargepole! Instead of the usual vague disappointment at not enjoying a book, I felt manipulated - and conned.
Hadn't twigged, though, that the back and white covers of Wolf Hall were male and female versions. I got this from the library, so perhaps my opinion doesn't count ... but I felt more drawn to the black cover. And I'm female.

[m]

Sorry, I meant black and white covers of Wolf Hall. And please excuse other typos. Funny how they stand out so clearly - as soon as you've posted!