To be honest, I am someone who really doesn't like when there are nothing but author blurbs on the back of the book with no space for the actual book blurb, like I want to know what the book is about and not just which authors like it. Like tell me the vibes, tell me the story, give me intrigue that makes me want to pick it up, don't just have people going "this is good"!!!
I've always wondered who is looking at blurbs to decide if they'll read it. Like there is never going to be a negative blurb. One author basically goes "this is a book" on all of his blurbs. Like, that adds nothing but they still do it, so someone somewhere is using blurbs right?
I don't mind 1 or 2 blurbs on a book...but sometimes it's too many and it makes me think the publisher will knows this is a Turkey so they blurb the book to lure you into buying it
Agree! I also hate when there are several pages of blurbs at the front for either that book or other books the author has out. Just more pages for me to skip passed. I always feel like the publisher is trying a bit too hard. Though, I'm wondering if they send out requests for a blurb and maybe get more back then they were expecting and then dont want to risk offending the authors so they include them all. I might pay attention to them more if it was obvious they have actually read the book.
I don’t even read author blurbs. It has zero effect on if I pick up a book. I’ve seen so many clearly “paid” blurbs. I don’t take them seriously at all.
I've always hoped someone would create a Blurb-a-thon readathon. You start with a blurb on your favourite book, and you hop along. That sounds fun to me :)
"Alan Moore, who I've never heard of" was a surprising line to hear for any comic book fan lol! He's a legendary (and notably rly eccentric) comics writer whose best known works are creating Watchmen and V for Vendetta, but also has written some prose fiction I think. I'm not a die hard fan of his but if I saw he blurbed a book, especially one that isn't comics related or inspired, I admit it would intrigue me
Quite a few comic book writers snuck in there. I hadn't really paid attention to whether they commonly blurb novels before (other than writers like Seanan McGuire who have a presence in both formats). I'd definitely be interested to see if there's any crossover appeal from comic writers I've enjoyed to novels they've blurbed.
I was also shocked she didn’t know who it was. Then I realized I got confused with Christopher Moore… and know I’d really wish people didn’t have the same last names. Lol 😂… Then I realized that I did know who both “Moore’s” were… and that I should probably just go to sleep 😂
It startled me too as someone who has spent too long in both comics fandom and comics academia where Alan Moore is used as a cudgel by people to denote ~ serious ~ superhero books/the only superhero comics "worth" studying (academic elitism towards superhero comics is... yeah™), which is exhausting if you're not a devout Moore fan (which I'm not; I'm more of a Grant Morrison girlie in that choose-your-fighter wizard battle). "Who I've never heard of" was very refreshing, tbh. Iconic behavior, Lala. Enviable. Wish that were me.
It’d be fun to have you read blurbs after you read a new book and see whose blurbs you agree with most. Then, those authors could eventually become a new themed tbr.
I loved this! 😍 I think Riley Marie did a video where she read books blurbed by her favorite author. Would be interesting to see you do something like that. Or read books from Jenna's book club! 😉
The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri is an adult fantasy that is often talked about alongside She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker Chan and also the Unbroken by CL Clark. Together the books are known as the sapphic trifecta. They are all adult fantasy that came out within a few months of each other that had orangeish covers. They're all by and about sapphic woman and enby poc. They also all tackle various systems of social injustice in non-Western settings - primarily patriarchy (TS), colonialism (CLC), and gender essentialism (SPC). The name started from a meme of the Pope holding up all three books but quickly became a big part of the marketing for each, despite TS and CLC publishing with Orbit and SPC with Tor. They even held book events together. Even now, Orbit's last marketing tweet about the Faithless, the second CLC book, is just SPC's blurb. Orbit even made it so that both TS and CLC's sequels have matching green covers and reached out to Tor about it, but the second SPC is, unfortunately, a really beautiful blue.
@@YasmeenKhan no not particularly. Priory was released on 2019 and these were all in 2021. The two Orbit books in particular are closer to amber rather than orange and are both character and setting portraits. The US version of She Who Became the Sun is more of a yellow and orange fantasy epic cover while the UK one has an orange and gold historical fiction feel. That UK one is the only one that I would consider to be close in vibe to Priory but I think that's because the publisher wanted Priory to look Eastern-inspired, not the other way around.
From the author side (in my experience), getting blurbs from your friends is sometimes a last resort. You start with authors whose work you admire and leaders of your genre, or your famous-in-your-genre-close friends. Then those authors either reject you, say yes but ghost you, or say yes and blurb you (even friends will sometimes ghost you 😅)! If the rejections and ghosting happens a lot, then you're definitely gonna end up asking friends--any friend lol It's not a failure in my mind because who cares if nobody volunteers to give you something most people don't read 😂 but many authors take it hard so it can be stressful.
aliette de bodard is a vietnamese french author who writes sapphic vietnamese fantasies and sci-fi. she recently had a sci-fi release called the red scholars wake that i have yet to get to but her novellas have always been a hit for me 💖 hope you give her a shot!
I spent so much of the video wondering if you'd notice that you put Charlaine Harris on there two different times, I was so relieved when you fixed it lmao 😂😂
I was worried about it too (because, y'know, it's the biggest problem in the world, sheesh), and after it was fixed I thought maybe I'd misheard her. LOL
Recently I saw that both NK Jemisin and John Scalzi blurbed Chuck Tingle's new horror book Camp Damascus which is coming out later this year. Love is real folks.
yess, I am so excited for that one! I read his first foray into horror, the novella 'Straight' (it was quite good!!!) so that's a good sign for Camp Damascus, especially with NK Jemisin (who I think wouldn't blurb just for friendship) and I also think T. Kingfisher blurbed. Hope we love it, love is real either way
Justice for Aimee Bender 😅😅😅 she was on the inside of how high we go in the dark and I waited the whole video for her to be added. Whoever she is. Haha! All the tbr videos from this please, I’m going to make my own from my books as well. Loved this
someone may have already had this idea, but what if you played a game of like….. blurb “telephone”? like you read a book and then choose a book or author blurbed on the back of that first book, and then one on the back of the second, and so on
Jenna from "Read with Jenna" is Jenna Bush Hager, the daughter of former US president George W Bush. She's a journalist on a popular morning show these days.
I've just been re watching and binging all your videos this last week, even though I've been watching for ages. Really helping me distract my mind while my mother is going through cancer treatment, thanks so much lala ❤
After building a TBR from this, a complimentary idea to this would be to build a TBR based on being blurbed by 3 or more (or another arbitrary number) of your favourite authors. Loved this chilled out video, your voice is so relaxing 😌
I read The Witch’s Heart by Genevieve Gornichec this year and loved it. Would recommend the audio book as well because I loved the narrator. I was able to get it through my library.
I always look at blurbs on books and get excited when I see authors I’ve liked previously but it never sways my opinion on a book. I mainly love to look at blurbs from authors I don’t know on books I love to see if any of their books sound good. I think it can be a fun way to discover new authors, especially on more indie and small press releases!
Mathew Salaess was a professor at my college! He's written quite a few novels but actually the book he's gotten the most notice for is his technical writing book. He's amazing all around, love him
I did my masters thesis on the effect of blurbs on desirability or intention to read! And basically.... I found no effect. For those interested in the science: I manipulated a bunch of variables, like synopsis elements, tagline, name accompanying the blurb, etc. to find possible moderators/mediators and to try to separate the effect of the blurb, but the only thing I found actually influences the desirability of the book or the intention of the reader to pick it up was the synopsis. Of course there were a bunch of limitations and I never worked on it more to actually make it more robust, but still. I thought it was fun research to do!
i have the bunny paperback and on the front there is a blurb from margaret atwood. it just says “Oh bunny, you are soo genuis!” which is definitely my favorite blurb i’ve seen
I was surprised to hear you say you've never heard of Alan Moore, he was one of the only people I had heard of that you wrote down from the first few books (and, quite ironically, Charlaine Harris who you also wasn't familiar with)
I'm excited to see you read Tamora Pierce, my best friend was into her from childhood and got me into her books as an adult with mixed results. I found the circle stuff read a bit too young for me to enjoy, but I'm a massive Alanna fan. I feel like she's pretty prolific so you have many options and if you find stuff you enjoy she's such a great gateway to people like Mercedes Lackey. I wish I could have read Tamora Pierce right around when I was reading L. M. Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott because I could have progressed to Mercedes Lackey and Margaret Owen before Seanan McGuire and that would have been a great way to grow up.
Karen Russel is an amazing short story writer. The stories are weird and beautiful. Her collection Vampires in the Lemon Grove in particular is a big favourite of mine.
I think you'd really like Heart Berries by Therese Marie Mailhot! It's a short memoir told in essays by an Indigenous author, and I think you'd enjoy the writing style. It was 5 stars for me.
I looooove this exploration videos!!! Have never even thought of blurbs before and now I’m about to go through my entire bookshelf to see what I find!!
I'm surprised you haven't read Karen Russell. My first reaction was "Yeah, I don't pay attention to blurbs" but almost immediately I realized that's not true. I just bought a book the other day solely on spying the cover blurb from an author friend. I read blurbs on books by authors I haven't read previously because it gives me a sense of what to expect. I agree that more specific, quirky blurbs carry more weight than ones that feel vaguely supportive. I like the idea of checking out unknown to me authors from seeing their blurbs, that hadn't occurred to me. I always get Aliette de Bodard's novellas at our library confused with Nghi Vo's novella series (I really love Vo's novella series.) I read de Bodard's Fireheart Tiger and liked it, but had forgotten she was the author. I should read more of her work.
I love this!! I'm always so intrigued by which author blurbs what and the conversations behind it - this video fits that so perfectly. It could be a really fun video idea if you collect a couple of books blurbed by the same author and see if it really does align with what you like about that authors writing, or something along the lines.
Karen Russell and Aimee Bender (and also Kelly Link, another author I associate with these 2) have weird magical realism/horror-adjacent short story collections that I think you might enjoy!
Thank you - Russell and Link are automatic picks when I see them, but I'm not familiar with Aimee Bender. But I'll look for her now that you say she in the same dark quirky style. Have you read Maria, Maria and Other Stories by Marytza K. Rubio?
Yes, it's quite common for future editions of books to be reblurbed! Especially when a book is released in paperback after an initial hardback release, as it should hopefully have some press reviews by then. 😊
I loved Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse series. I wasn't even a big reader at the time, but went through every single book in the series and would argue intently if anyone said that they liked Twilight, since it seemed to me to be a big ripoff of the Sookie books. PS You listed Chalaine Harris twice but didn't give her two points lol (Also love Hugh Howie and his Wool-Shift-Dust series)
Sometimes, especially for debut or lesser known authors the blurbs are from agent-siblings in order to generate buzz so the other authors might not have super similar types of books, depending on what that agent covers for representing authors.
I generally don't read blubs. However, if I see Ali Hazelwood has blurbed the book I am hesitant to pick it up. The last 2 books I read that she blurbed I hated and that's not a lot but now i have it in my head that I won't like them. Which since I generally don't read them, is strange
Oh geez, all my favorite authors on here are the ones that I guess other people haven't heard of?! You have to read Aimee Bender, especially The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. It's weird and heartwarming and I think right up your alley! For Karen Russell, I'd be tempted to recommend her short stories before Swamplandia! Swamplandia! is incredible, but her short stories are also fantastic.
I'll notice when an author I love has blurbed a book but it doesn't sway me! I'm reading and loving Winter's Orbit right now and it's blurbed by Martha Wells and Emily Tesh who I adore and I think endorsements from them make sense. I'll have to start paying more attention!
I haven't finished the video, but I wanted to pause and say, you might find Swamplandia! by Karen Russell an interesting read. It's got the weird vibe to it that you like.
I'd be really curious for you to do this for books you didn't like and see if there's commonality there. Also Jenna is Jenna Hager Bush - she's on one of the morning shows (I think the Today show?) but is also one of GW Bush's daughters...
i loved sisters by daisy johnson!! it was a 5 star for me, it definitely has weird and unsettling vibes. her writing reminds me of a combination of sally rooney and julia armfield, who i know you’ve read and enjoyed!!!
I'm a vintage toy collector and there's this collector who does youtube videos about Polly Pockets named Holly. She sometimes does videos where she goes through lots of Polly Pocket compacts that she's purchased and enters them into a spreadsheet. Its my favorite videos that she makes...this video gives me the same vibes. I could watch people enter stuff into spreadsheets all day. It's like ASMR to me 😅😅❤
Read with Jenna is the Today show book club. Jenna is George W. Bush's daughter. I hate that branding along with the Reese Book Club branding. But hey, you've earned your "so Canadian" badge of the day. 😉😂
Currently in the middle of reading Kingdom of Copper by SA Chakraborty and its heavily influenced by Middle Eastern history and religion, there is also doomed love and some vengeful Djinn😂 so her blurbing Hacienda how she did rings very true and makes a lot of sense! I know you don’t read a lot of epic fantasy but I do think you’d really enjoy SA Chakraborty’s Daevabad Trilogy! 🥹 Edit: this video made me realise I do not know a lot of the authors names who are on my TBR😅
I'm really guilty for blindly buying books that are blurbed by my fave authors. I actually do look for it when I'm browsing in bookshops. I would never have known about Lud-in-the-Mist if I hadn't seen Neil Gaiman's name on the cover... Turned out to be one of my favourite books
Yasss, I'm feeling vindicated and I am going to keep recommending The Witch's Heart to you! It's so, so good and I think you would like it based on your love of Daughter of the Moon Goddess and Circe!
Can confirm newer published versions have more/different blurbs. My copy of My Heart is a Chainsaw has a whole inner flap with blurbs but the only author on it is Grady Hendrix.
I must admit, given how well read you are, there were a few names here that I’m shocked that you didn’t recognize on sight. The I realized that they were big quite a while ago (like over a decade). Going to go contemplate my own mortality now.
I do this a lot! Often I'll discover a book that I love and don't know exactly the genre or how to describe, so I'll used the authors who've vlurbed the book to give me ideas. I've found some other books I've really loved that way, id really recommend doing some sort of tbr based on it cos I usually find it's successful!
Karen Russell also wrote the short story Vampires in the Lemon Grove which might be a nice way to try out her writing before committing to Swamplandia!
Oh my gosh hearing Terese Marie Mailhot and not being familiar with her broke my heart lol. She is a Canadian author and her book Heart Berries is absolutely beautiful!
I think youd like the witchs heart by genevieve gornichec, its very similar vibes to circe by miller, but where circe is summer heart is winter. I read both last year and they are both faves for me now
I love Ellen Klages. I highly recommend her short story collection Portable Childhoods. She is definitely genre bending with weird, sci-fi/ fantasy and horror in differing amounts. There was also one story that made me sob.
I really loved this video! I don't think I pay much attention to author blurbs beyond the "hey that's cool" name recognition lol. I also read a lot of classics and 20th century backlisted books, and they tend to only get blurbed, if at all, by, like, the NYT and LARB. I actually just looked through my own favorites to see any common names and the two most prominent were Bret Easton Ellis and Edmund White. Both of which I completely get, given my taste in literature, but it's funny because I love most of BEE's work and absolutely nothing I've read by Edmund White has gotten about a two.
I am not 100% sure, but I have heard that when The Hunger Games first came out, it was blurbed by Stephen King and it was about more of the "action" and "terror" aspect of the book. And then when it got the movie deal, it was blurbed by Stephenie Meyer and other YA authors were the focus was on the love triangle and the romance. I don't know if it is true, but if it is, then it's really interesting.
Jenna is Jenna Bush Hagar. She's the daughter of former president George W. Bush and she is a TV personality on the Today show. She has a show with Hoda Kotb. She also writes children's books with her twin sisters about girl power, sisters and family/found family! :)
My ride-or-die authors will sway me to buy books if they’ve blurbed it: Tamora Pierce, Helen Huang, Seanan McGuire, Kristin Cashore, TJ Klune, etc. That’s usually the clincher if I’m on the fence about getting it. Also Hannah Whitten is not YA-all her books are shelved in Adult Fantasy if that sways you into reading something. Though I don’t think she’s up your street anyway lol
Kayla!! You may be annoyed with me but you read a blurb done by Hanif abdurraqib and I’m ✨🥺 politely begging 🥺✨ you to read or listen to his 2021 novel, A Little Devil in America. He’s a poet and uses those skills to tell a unique story about the history of black performance that he weaves his personal experience and poetry rhythm into. It’s gorgeous. Best book of the year for me so far. I’ve been watching you for yearssssss so I feel solid about the recco!
as far as i know the blurbs aren't made for the readers themselves but for booksellers and librarians. it's not "if you liked books by the blurbing author, you might also enjoy THIS book", it's more of a "if books by the blurbing author sell well at your store, THIS book might also sell well"
Now you've got me checking the cover of an arc of The Last Word by Taylor Adam's. No blurbs yet, but the "Marketing Campaign" info on the back was interesting. Included with print and online media coverage, various podcasts and social media advertising is 'Paid Influencer Promotion.'
Hugh Howey reminds me a bit of Blake Crouch. His Silo Saga starts with "Wool" and will soon be on TV. Dystopian world that sucked me right in! I read them all and the fan fiction as well. It is YA I think but oh so good! Fast read too. I hope one day you get to it!
This is a cool video idea! fyi, Taffy Brodesser-Akner is also an author. She wrote Fleishman Is In Trouble, which has recently been adapted into a series. Claire Danes, Lizzy Caplan, Jesse Eisenberg, and Adam Brody are starring in it.
if you were in the UK or had more UK editions Kiran millwood Hargrave would've showed up multiple times for sure😌 its interesting that blurbs are different between countries i guess! kmh is on my (uk) copy of sea of tranquility! and definitely lots of other weird books that are the kind of thing you like😌 I think its a mix of UK authors blurb other UK authors more but also probably only get included on the UK publication of books🤔 anyway I've read her children's book and really liked it! I haven't read any of her adult books but from their synopses they sound really up your street they're like obscure historical settings with like weird magical elements :) i can't give you a specific rec but I do think you could really enjoy her writing
Ah, so many excellent author mentions. Since Rebecca Makkai was mentioned (on The Need), I'm going to take a moment to plug her latest novel I Have Some Questions for You. It's about a woman whose junior roommate was murdered at the boarding school they attended and 20 years later she returns to teach a class on podcasting. Her student takes an interest in the main character's roommate and believes the man sent to prison was wrongly convicted, a belief the main character starts to agree with. Great discussion of the justice system, memory, and our obsession with true crime.
I’ll be honest - I bought The Burning because the cover is gorgeous and Yaa Gyasi blurbed it. I do actually pay attention to blurbs and some authors are red flags for me if I see them. 😅
Speaking of Seanan McGuire, have you read "Into the Drowning Deep" by her? Penned under her pseudonym Mira Grant. I read this years ago and STILL think about it regularly. One of my most favourite reads of all time! Would love to hear your thoughts.
I think you'd like Matthew Salesses' non-fiction book Craft in the Real World. It's a book mostly for writers, but I think it's a great resource to look at how dominant cultures enforce writing standards. “Craft is about who has the power to write stories, what stories are historicized and who historicizes them, who gets to write literature and who folklore, whose writing is important and to whom, in what context. This is the process of standardization. If craft is teachable, it is because standardization is teachable. These standards must be challenged and disempowered.”
This was fascinating! I think you may really like Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha. It gave me Miracle Creek vibes with complicated racial and family interactions. It's a fictionalized take on the tragedy of the killing of Latasha Harlins. I loved it. And I think you'd like A Little Devil in America by Hanif Abdurraqib. It's an exploration of Black contributions to culture, and it was fantastic.
Still at the start of the video, so I'm now really curious if this going to turn into a series of reading vlogs. Not really sure what Alan Moore I'd recommend to someone not really into comics.
A fun video idea would be a “battle of the book club”: face off Oprah/Reese/Jenna/etc picks to see which book club you prefer the picks from.
Omg this would be so fun! Reese’s are always so good I feel like
To be honest, I am someone who really doesn't like when there are nothing but author blurbs on the back of the book with no space for the actual book blurb, like I want to know what the book is about and not just which authors like it. Like tell me the vibes, tell me the story, give me intrigue that makes me want to pick it up, don't just have people going "this is good"!!!
I've always wondered who is looking at blurbs to decide if they'll read it. Like there is never going to be a negative blurb. One author basically goes "this is a book" on all of his blurbs. Like, that adds nothing but they still do it, so someone somewhere is using blurbs right?
I don't mind 1 or 2 blurbs on a book...but sometimes it's too many and it makes me think the publisher will knows this is a Turkey so they blurb the book to lure you into buying it
The blurbs do pretty much zero for me except maybe help place a genre. I don’t care if my fave author liked a book. I may still hate it.
Agree! I also hate when there are several pages of blurbs at the front for either that book or other books the author has out. Just more pages for me to skip passed. I always feel like the publisher is trying a bit too hard. Though, I'm wondering if they send out requests for a blurb and maybe get more back then they were expecting and then dont want to risk offending the authors so they include them all.
I might pay attention to them more if it was obvious they have actually read the book.
I don’t even read author blurbs. It has zero effect on if I pick up a book. I’ve seen so many clearly “paid” blurbs. I don’t take them seriously at all.
I've always hoped someone would create a Blurb-a-thon readathon. You start with a blurb on your favourite book, and you hop along. That sounds fun to me :)
Ooooh! This is such a great idea!!~
great idea!
"Alan Moore, who I've never heard of" was a surprising line to hear for any comic book fan lol! He's a legendary (and notably rly eccentric) comics writer whose best known works are creating Watchmen and V for Vendetta, but also has written some prose fiction I think. I'm not a die hard fan of his but if I saw he blurbed a book, especially one that isn't comics related or inspired, I admit it would intrigue me
Quite a few comic book writers snuck in there. I hadn't really paid attention to whether they commonly blurb novels before (other than writers like Seanan McGuire who have a presence in both formats). I'd definitely be interested to see if there's any crossover appeal from comic writers I've enjoyed to novels they've blurbed.
I was also shocked she didn’t know who it was. Then I realized I got confused with Christopher Moore… and know I’d really wish people didn’t have the same last names. Lol 😂…
Then I realized that I did know who both “Moore’s” were… and that I should probably just go to sleep 😂
It startled me too as someone who has spent too long in both comics fandom and comics academia where Alan Moore is used as a cudgel by people to denote ~ serious ~ superhero books/the only superhero comics "worth" studying (academic elitism towards superhero comics is... yeah™), which is exhausting if you're not a devout Moore fan (which I'm not; I'm more of a Grant Morrison girlie in that choose-your-fighter wizard battle). "Who I've never heard of" was very refreshing, tbh. Iconic behavior, Lala. Enviable. Wish that were me.
I giggled at it 😂
It’d be fun to have you read blurbs after you read a new book and see whose blurbs you agree with most. Then, those authors could eventually become a new themed tbr.
THIS 👆🏻
Oh man I love a “dull” spreadsheet video let’s goooo
I loved this! 😍 I think Riley Marie did a video where she read books blurbed by her favorite author. Would be interesting to see you do something like that. Or read books from Jenna's book club! 😉
That was fun to watch and one of my faves from her! I’ve been waiting for others to do it too.
The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri is an adult fantasy that is often talked about alongside She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker Chan and also the Unbroken by CL Clark. Together the books are known as the sapphic trifecta.
They are all adult fantasy that came out within a few months of each other that had orangeish covers. They're all by and about sapphic woman and enby poc. They also all tackle various systems of social injustice in non-Western settings - primarily patriarchy (TS), colonialism (CLC), and gender essentialism (SPC).
The name started from a meme of the Pope holding up all three books but quickly became a big part of the marketing for each, despite TS and CLC publishing with Orbit and SPC with Tor. They even held book events together. Even now, Orbit's last marketing tweet about the Faithless, the second CLC book, is just SPC's blurb.
Orbit even made it so that both TS and CLC's sequels have matching green covers and reached out to Tor about it, but the second SPC is, unfortunately, a really beautiful blue.
interesting: do you think the choice of orange was influenced by Priory of the Orange Tree?
@@YasmeenKhan no not particularly. Priory was released on 2019 and these were all in 2021. The two Orbit books in particular are closer to amber rather than orange and are both character and setting portraits. The US version of She Who Became the Sun is more of a yellow and orange fantasy epic cover while the UK one has an orange and gold historical fiction feel. That UK one is the only one that I would consider to be close in vibe to Priory but I think that's because the publisher wanted Priory to look Eastern-inspired, not the other way around.
From the author side (in my experience), getting blurbs from your friends is sometimes a last resort. You start with authors whose work you admire and leaders of your genre, or your famous-in-your-genre-close friends. Then those authors either reject you, say yes but ghost you, or say yes and blurb you (even friends will sometimes ghost you 😅)! If the rejections and ghosting happens a lot, then you're definitely gonna end up asking friends--any friend lol
It's not a failure in my mind because who cares if nobody volunteers to give you something most people don't read 😂 but many authors take it hard so it can be stressful.
aliette de bodard is a vietnamese french author who writes sapphic vietnamese fantasies and sci-fi. she recently had a sci-fi release called the red scholars wake that i have yet to get to but her novellas have always been a hit for me 💖 hope you give her a shot!
I spent so much of the video wondering if you'd notice that you put Charlaine Harris on there two different times, I was so relieved when you fixed it lmao 😂😂
I'm still watching, but I'm extremely glad to read this and know it got fixed😅
I came to the comments just to check if that gets fixed so I could relax 😂
I was worried about it too (because, y'know, it's the biggest problem in the world, sheesh), and after it was fixed I thought maybe I'd misheard her. LOL
Recently I saw that both NK Jemisin and John Scalzi blurbed Chuck Tingle's new horror book Camp Damascus which is coming out later this year. Love is real folks.
Honestly I'm just so excited for the day that someone likes his horror book and then goes to look at his other books, not knowing what they'll find.
yess, I am so excited for that one! I read his first foray into horror, the novella 'Straight' (it was quite good!!!) so that's a good sign for Camp Damascus, especially with NK Jemisin (who I think wouldn't blurb just for friendship) and I also think T. Kingfisher blurbed. Hope we love it, love is real either way
Justice for Aimee Bender 😅😅😅 she was on the inside of how high we go in the dark and I waited the whole video for her to be added. Whoever she is. Haha! All the tbr videos from this please, I’m going to make my own from my books as well. Loved this
Her book the Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is so strange - the first magical realism I ever read!
I feel like she was huge on UK booktube a few years ago
I just read her butterfly lampshade book because a bookstore employee recommended it as I liked Bunny. It was pretty good!
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt is one of the very few books I regularly re-read
Taffy Brodesser-Akner IS an author. She wrote Fleishman Is In Trouble (which was recently adapted for TV!) 😊 Great book and show!
"dull spreadsheet-creating video" is def an oxymoron bc these are my favorite kayla vids 🥰😍
someone may have already had this idea, but what if you played a game of like….. blurb “telephone”? like you read a book and then choose a book or author blurbed on the back of that first book, and then one on the back of the second, and so on
Jenna from "Read with Jenna" is Jenna Bush Hager, the daughter of former US president George W Bush. She's a journalist on a popular morning show these days.
I was just gifted a "Jenna's" book today and also had this question! Thanks!
I knew it was one of the presidents daughters, but since I’m not American I didn’t care to find out more
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's the Today Show, but I was looking for this response to help boost it to the top. 😂
I've just been re watching and binging all your videos this last week, even though I've been watching for ages. Really helping me distract my mind while my mother is going through cancer treatment, thanks so much lala ❤
After building a TBR from this, a complimentary idea to this would be to build a TBR based on being blurbed by 3 or more (or another arbitrary number) of your favourite authors.
Loved this chilled out video, your voice is so relaxing 😌
I read The Witch’s Heart by Genevieve Gornichec this year and loved it. Would recommend the audio book as well because I loved the narrator. I was able to get it through my library.
I always look at blurbs on books and get excited when I see authors I’ve liked previously but it never sways my opinion on a book. I mainly love to look at blurbs from authors I don’t know on books I love to see if any of their books sound good. I think it can be a fun way to discover new authors, especially on more indie and small press releases!
Mathew Salaess was a professor at my college! He's written quite a few novels but actually the book he's gotten the most notice for is his technical writing book. He's amazing all around, love him
there is literally nothing more exciting to me than a spreadsheet video
I did my masters thesis on the effect of blurbs on desirability or intention to read! And basically.... I found no effect.
For those interested in the science: I manipulated a bunch of variables, like synopsis elements, tagline, name accompanying the blurb, etc. to find possible moderators/mediators and to try to separate the effect of the blurb, but the only thing I found actually influences the desirability of the book or the intention of the reader to pick it up was the synopsis. Of course there were a bunch of limitations and I never worked on it more to actually make it more robust, but still. I thought it was fun research to do!
Yes please!!! We need a follow up video making a tbr based off of this list!!
i have the bunny paperback and on the front there is a blurb from margaret atwood. it just says “Oh bunny, you are soo genuis!” which is definitely my favorite blurb i’ve seen
I was surprised to hear you say you've never heard of Alan Moore, he was one of the only people I had heard of that you wrote down from the first few books (and, quite ironically, Charlaine Harris who you also wasn't familiar with)
I would love, love, love to see a TBR vlog from some of these authors!
Video idea Lala reads Jenna recommends books and learns and tells us more about her.
I'm excited to see you read Tamora Pierce, my best friend was into her from childhood and got me into her books as an adult with mixed results. I found the circle stuff read a bit too young for me to enjoy, but I'm a massive Alanna fan. I feel like she's pretty prolific so you have many options and if you find stuff you enjoy she's such a great gateway to people like Mercedes Lackey. I wish I could have read Tamora Pierce right around when I was reading L. M. Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott because I could have progressed to Mercedes Lackey and Margaret Owen before Seanan McGuire and that would have been a great way to grow up.
Karen Russel is an amazing short story writer. The stories are weird and beautiful. Her collection Vampires in the Lemon Grove in particular is a big favourite of mine.
I think you'd really like Heart Berries by Therese Marie Mailhot! It's a short memoir told in essays by an Indigenous author, and I think you'd enjoy the writing style. It was 5 stars for me.
i keep trying to close the blurbs as if its an ad, gets me every time ahahaha
I looooove this exploration videos!!! Have never even thought of blurbs before and now I’m about to go through my entire bookshelf to see what I find!!
I'm surprised you haven't read Karen Russell. My first reaction was "Yeah, I don't pay attention to blurbs" but almost immediately I realized that's not true. I just bought a book the other day solely on spying the cover blurb from an author friend. I read blurbs on books by authors I haven't read previously because it gives me a sense of what to expect. I agree that more specific, quirky blurbs carry more weight than ones that feel vaguely supportive. I like the idea of checking out unknown to me authors from seeing their blurbs, that hadn't occurred to me. I always get Aliette de Bodard's novellas at our library confused with Nghi Vo's novella series (I really love Vo's novella series.) I read de Bodard's Fireheart Tiger and liked it, but had forgotten she was the author. I should read more of her work.
I love this!! I'm always so intrigued by which author blurbs what and the conversations behind it - this video fits that so perfectly. It could be a really fun video idea if you collect a couple of books blurbed by the same author and see if it really does align with what you like about that authors writing, or something along the lines.
My frustration level when you wrote Charlaine Harris twice in the spreadsheet 😂😅
Karen Russell and Aimee Bender (and also Kelly Link, another author I associate with these 2) have weird magical realism/horror-adjacent short story collections that I think you might enjoy!
Thank you - Russell and Link are automatic picks when I see them, but I'm not familiar with Aimee Bender. But I'll look for her now that you say she in the same dark quirky style. Have you read Maria, Maria and Other Stories by Marytza K. Rubio?
@@FaeryLaume I haven't!
@@bookwormkara Well then correct that! LOL
Yes, it's quite common for future editions of books to be reblurbed! Especially when a book is released in paperback after an initial hardback release, as it should hopefully have some press reviews by then. 😊
I loved Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse series. I wasn't even a big reader at the time, but went through every single book in the series and would argue intently if anyone said that they liked Twilight, since it seemed to me to be a big ripoff of the Sookie books. PS You listed Chalaine Harris twice but didn't give her two points lol (Also love Hugh Howie and his Wool-Shift-Dust series)
Hannah Whitten is actually adult fantasy.
Nonetheless, thank you for glorious spreadsheet content 😍😍😍
Sometimes, especially for debut or lesser known authors the blurbs are from agent-siblings in order to generate buzz so the other authors might not have super similar types of books, depending on what that agent covers for representing authors.
i HIGHLY recommend Hanif Abduraqqib!! such an amazing writer
I second this - one of my favourites!!!
YES THANK YOU!! ❤ I’ve written Kayla a few comments about Hanif. I think she’d love him.
I usually never read blurbs or even pay attention to them so this is an intriguing concept!
You’re a mastermind for giving us this video before Lalathon. I now have an ambitious TBR
I generally don't read blubs. However, if I see Ali Hazelwood has blurbed the book I am hesitant to pick it up. The last 2 books I read that she blurbed I hated and that's not a lot but now i have it in my head that I won't like them. Which since I generally don't read them, is strange
Oh geez, all my favorite authors on here are the ones that I guess other people haven't heard of?! You have to read Aimee Bender, especially The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. It's weird and heartwarming and I think right up your alley! For Karen Russell, I'd be tempted to recommend her short stories before Swamplandia! Swamplandia! is incredible, but her short stories are also fantastic.
I'll notice when an author I love has blurbed a book but it doesn't sway me! I'm reading and loving Winter's Orbit right now and it's blurbed by Martha Wells and Emily Tesh who I adore and I think endorsements from them make sense. I'll have to start paying more attention!
I haven't finished the video, but I wanted to pause and say, you might find Swamplandia! by Karen Russell an interesting read. It's got the weird vibe to it that you like.
I love that you posted this right before I start to wind down for the night. Perfect RUclips video to watch with tea from bed 👌
I have...literally never read a blurb to decide whether to buy/read a book. This is such an interesting concept!
I'd be really curious for you to do this for books you didn't like and see if there's commonality there.
Also Jenna is Jenna Hager Bush - she's on one of the morning shows (I think the Today show?) but is also one of GW Bush's daughters...
ooooo i think this video could be fun in reserve build a tbr based on books your all time favorite authors have blurbed
i loved sisters by daisy johnson!! it was a 5 star for me, it definitely has weird and unsettling vibes. her writing reminds me of a combination of sally rooney and julia armfield, who i know you’ve read and enjoyed!!!
I'm a vintage toy collector and there's this collector who does youtube videos about Polly Pockets named Holly. She sometimes does videos where she goes through lots of Polly Pocket compacts that she's purchased and enters them into a spreadsheet. Its my favorite videos that she makes...this video gives me the same vibes. I could watch people enter stuff into spreadsheets all day. It's like ASMR to me 😅😅❤
Read with Jenna is the Today show book club. Jenna is George W. Bush's daughter. I hate that branding along with the Reese Book Club branding. But hey, you've earned your "so Canadian" badge of the day. 😉😂
Excited for the Lala-thon 🎉
Currently in the middle of reading Kingdom of Copper by SA Chakraborty and its heavily influenced by Middle Eastern history and religion, there is also doomed love and some vengeful Djinn😂 so her blurbing Hacienda how she did rings very true and makes a lot of sense! I know you don’t read a lot of epic fantasy but I do think you’d really enjoy SA Chakraborty’s Daevabad Trilogy! 🥹
Edit: this video made me realise I do not know a lot of the authors names who are on my TBR😅
I'm really guilty for blindly buying books that are blurbed by my fave authors. I actually do look for it when I'm browsing in bookshops. I would never have known about Lud-in-the-Mist if I hadn't seen Neil Gaiman's name on the cover... Turned out to be one of my favourite books
This is such an interesting concept. I usually never look at the blurbs, but maybe I’ll start now!
Yasss, I'm feeling vindicated and I am going to keep recommending The Witch's Heart to you! It's so, so good and I think you would like it based on your love of Daughter of the Moon Goddess and Circe!
Can confirm newer published versions have more/different blurbs. My copy of My Heart is a Chainsaw has a whole inner flap with blurbs but the only author on it is Grady Hendrix.
I must admit, given how well read you are, there were a few names here that I’m shocked that you didn’t recognize on sight. The I realized that they were big quite a while ago (like over a decade). Going to go contemplate my own mortality now.
I do this a lot! Often I'll discover a book that I love and don't know exactly the genre or how to describe, so I'll used the authors who've vlurbed the book to give me ideas. I've found some other books I've really loved that way, id really recommend doing some sort of tbr based on it cos I usually find it's successful!
Karen Russell also wrote the short story Vampires in the Lemon Grove which might be a nice way to try out her writing before committing to Swamplandia!
Aimee Benders The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is the book that got me into reading
I usually pay zero attention to blurbs, but I feel like after this I’m going to read them more!
Oh my gosh hearing Terese Marie Mailhot and not being familiar with her broke my heart lol. She is a Canadian author and her book Heart Berries is absolutely beautiful!
I think youd like the witchs heart by genevieve gornichec, its very similar vibes to circe by miller, but where circe is summer heart is winter. I read both last year and they are both faves for me now
I’m down for Kayla content in all its forms 💖
This is so creative and I am loving the author recommendations videos 😍💚
I love Ellen Klages. I highly recommend her short story collection Portable Childhoods. She is definitely genre bending with weird, sci-fi/ fantasy and horror in differing amounts. There was also one story that made me sob.
I really loved this video! I don't think I pay much attention to author blurbs beyond the "hey that's cool" name recognition lol. I also read a lot of classics and 20th century backlisted books, and they tend to only get blurbed, if at all, by, like, the NYT and LARB.
I actually just looked through my own favorites to see any common names and the two most prominent were Bret Easton Ellis and Edmund White. Both of which I completely get, given my taste in literature, but it's funny because I love most of BEE's work and absolutely nothing I've read by Edmund White has gotten about a two.
yay!! I've been wanting you to do something like this for a while! it sounds so fun ❤️❤️
There was a great article about Jenna’s Book Club in the New York Times a month or so ago. I honestly trust her picks more than Reese Witherspoon’s.
I also would love to ask these questions to publishers
I am not 100% sure, but I have heard that when The Hunger Games first came out, it was blurbed by Stephen King and it was about more of the "action" and "terror" aspect of the book. And then when it got the movie deal, it was blurbed by Stephenie Meyer and other YA authors were the focus was on the love triangle and the romance. I don't know if it is true, but if it is, then it's really interesting.
This makes me want to look at my favorite books and see who blurbed them!
Jenna is Jenna Bush Hagar. She's the daughter of former president George W. Bush and she is a TV personality on the Today show. She has a show with Hoda Kotb. She also writes children's books with her twin sisters about girl power, sisters and family/found family! :)
My ride-or-die authors will sway me to buy books if they’ve blurbed it: Tamora Pierce, Helen Huang, Seanan McGuire, Kristin Cashore, TJ Klune, etc. That’s usually the clincher if I’m on the fence about getting it. Also Hannah Whitten is not YA-all her books are shelved in Adult Fantasy if that sways you into reading something. Though I don’t think she’s up your street anyway lol
Kayla!! You may be annoyed with me but you read a blurb done by Hanif abdurraqib and I’m ✨🥺 politely begging 🥺✨ you to read or listen to his 2021 novel, A Little Devil in America. He’s a poet and uses those skills to tell a unique story about the history of black performance that he weaves his personal experience and poetry rhythm into. It’s gorgeous. Best book of the year for me so far. I’ve been watching you for yearssssss so I feel solid about the recco!
Cosign this rec for Kayla, for sure
@@cerrad. ❤
as far as i know the blurbs aren't made for the readers themselves but for booksellers and librarians. it's not "if you liked books by the blurbing author, you might also enjoy THIS book", it's more of a "if books by the blurbing author sell well at your store, THIS book might also sell well"
yay i think i remember you talking about this idea once,, i’m excited !
Now you've got me checking the cover of an arc of The Last Word by Taylor Adam's. No blurbs yet, but the "Marketing Campaign" info on the back was interesting. Included with print and online media coverage, various podcasts and social media advertising is 'Paid Influencer Promotion.'
Jenna is Jenna Bush, daughter of George Bush and now currently host of the Today Show (which is a morning talk show in the us)
Hugh Howey reminds me a bit of Blake Crouch. His Silo Saga starts with "Wool" and will soon be on TV. Dystopian world that sucked me right in! I read them all and the fan fiction as well. It is YA I think but oh so good! Fast read too. I hope one day you get to it!
This is a cool video idea! fyi, Taffy Brodesser-Akner is also an author. She wrote Fleishman Is In Trouble, which has recently been adapted into a series. Claire Danes, Lizzy Caplan, Jesse Eisenberg, and Adam Brody are starring in it.
Taffy Brodesser-Akner is also an author, she wrote Fleishman is in Trouble
if you were in the UK or had more UK editions Kiran millwood Hargrave would've showed up multiple times for sure😌 its interesting that blurbs are different between countries i guess! kmh is on my (uk) copy of sea of tranquility! and definitely lots of other weird books that are the kind of thing you like😌 I think its a mix of UK authors blurb other UK authors more but also probably only get included on the UK publication of books🤔 anyway I've read her children's book and really liked it! I haven't read any of her adult books but from their synopses they sound really up your street they're like obscure historical settings with like weird magical elements :) i can't give you a specific rec but I do think you could really enjoy her writing
Ah, so many excellent author mentions. Since Rebecca Makkai was mentioned (on The Need), I'm going to take a moment to plug her latest novel I Have Some Questions for You. It's about a woman whose junior roommate was murdered at the boarding school they attended and 20 years later she returns to teach a class on podcasting. Her student takes an interest in the main character's roommate and believes the man sent to prison was wrongly convicted, a belief the main character starts to agree with. Great discussion of the justice system, memory, and our obsession with true crime.
I’ll be honest - I bought The Burning because the cover is gorgeous and Yaa Gyasi blurbed it. I do actually pay attention to blurbs and some authors are red flags for me if I see them. 😅
I never think to look up the names of the blurbs, interesting idea to do.
28:18 I'm still here! 😅🤣
Speaking of Seanan McGuire, have you read "Into the Drowning Deep" by her? Penned under her pseudonym Mira Grant. I read this years ago and STILL think about it regularly. One of my most favourite reads of all time! Would love to hear your thoughts.
Margret Atwood blurbed for Bunny at the front of the book
I think you'd like Matthew Salesses' non-fiction book Craft in the Real World. It's a book mostly for writers, but I think it's a great resource to look at how dominant cultures enforce writing standards. “Craft is about who has the power to write stories, what stories are historicized and who historicizes them, who gets to write literature and who folklore, whose writing is important and to whom, in what context. This is the process of standardization. If craft is teachable, it is because standardization is teachable. These standards must be challenged and disempowered.”
This was fascinating! I think you may really like Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha. It gave me Miracle Creek vibes with complicated racial and family interactions. It's a fictionalized take on the tragedy of the killing of Latasha Harlins. I loved it. And I think you'd like A Little Devil in America by Hanif Abdurraqib. It's an exploration of Black contributions to culture, and it was fantastic.
Still at the start of the video, so I'm now really curious if this going to turn into a series of reading vlogs.
Not really sure what Alan Moore I'd recommend to someone not really into comics.
Really think you should check out “Wool” by Hugh Howey. It’s an all-time favorite of mine!
I'm pretty sure Jenna is President Bush's daughter, who has a book club (on Good Morning America?)