On the cover of Fran Sandham's "ˇTraversa" there is the somewhat non-commital endorsement from The Guardian reading "I found myself increasingly gripped". Since publishing this and fishing around for what others thought of the book I found the Guardian review it came from - interesting reading, and a pointed comment on how marketing latches onto a snippet and does what it can... I'm currently reading Mazower's book on Salonica, and its cover features a quote from a somewhat non-commital Jan Morris review, I like Jan Morris, I'm enjoying Mazower, I'm sure my purchasing decision was uninfluenced, but nonetheless it's fascinating to see how 'documents' about documents are created.
People always say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. Should we respin this to say don't judge a review by the pullquote used on a cover? Or is that descending too far into a meta-narrative?
People always say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. Should we respin this to say don't judge a review by the pullquote used on a cover? Or is that descending too far into a meta-narrative?
No comments:
Post a Comment