When book cover quotes are the critical equivalent of youve had a haircut

I once had a copywriting job that involved writing promotional pieces for a group of chiropractors*. My brief said very clearly that I was not to promise any sort of positive results from visiting a chiropractor. Fair enough. A bit of bone crunching doesnt necessarily translate into someone being able to do backflips on command, after all.

But my brief went further than this. Not only was I not supposed to suggest that visiting a chiropractor would result in the miraculous healing of aches and pains and whatever else, but neither was I allowed to mention that it may do so. That there was even a possibility of all that subluxation stuff actually doing any good whatsoever.

The closest I was allowed to come to so much as hinting at any sort of reason that anyone might want to visit my client and give them some money was to suggest that a customer pick up a telephone.

The cynics among us (all of you, I hope) might read between the lines there and come to the conclusion that the act of picking up a telephone is probably about as useful as actually visiting a chiropractor.

All of that is a rather long way of saying that in general, promotional copy is utter bull. And readerly types will probably be all too aware of this.

The publishing industry has a very strange obsession with cover quotes. Perhaps because its cheaper to whack some text on to a book cover than to actually pay an artist to do a full-page design. Perhaps because things in quotation marks seem authoritative. (The people who think this clearly havent seen the Blog of Unnecessary Quotation Marks, a site that suggests that our notion of what is meant by anything enclosed in quote marks is shifting very quickly, very illiterately, and not as ironically as you might think.)

But whatever the case, its apparently taught in Cover Design 101 that a book simply must have a quote on it. This has led to publishers ferreting out whatever quotables they can find and applying the handy-dandy ellipsis with an abandon more usually seen among people tossing confetti at a wedding.

Its also led to poor put-upon friends-with-the-author semi-famous people making as much as possible of the wonderful ambiguity of the English language in order to pretend to say something nice about a book, when actually theyre just saying something about a book. Or sometimes just something, full stop.

Most book blurbs are the equivalent of someone saying to you, oh, youve had a haircut.

Some are sneaky and employ smoke and mirrors to seem as though theyre saying something nice when theyre saying something terribly mean. Being told that your haircut really brings out your features might be a nice thing, or, if you have an astonishingly large nose and a squinty eye, something more likely to issue from a mother-in-law.

The book blurb equivalents of these are things like an ambitious debut. Something that is ambitious is not necessarily a good thing. There are plenty of people who ambitiously set out to run a marathon. There are plenty of people who have ambitions of appearing on the front cover of Forbes. If I say that I have ambitions to be Australias first billionaire neurosurgeon, well, lets just say that you should employ a fact checker before you employ me.

In order to show just how prevalent these evasive and often hilarious book blurbs are, I took a random sampling of some of the books on my shelves.

This first one is from a book that has been sitting by the door ready to be donated (the book, that is, not the door). Its touted as an agreeable tale. Now, Im not sure about you, but Im not sure that a quote as lukewarm as this really needs to be on a book cover. After all, with the exceptions of politicians, lawyers and extremely spicy chilli dishes, most things by and large are quite agreeable.

Or how about this one, on a book that apparently features a delightful heroine (assuming that the rating scale is out of ten, and not, say, out of a hundred). But what of the rest of the book? Is the protagonist the only thing about this book that will stop you from clawing out your eyes? Surely this is more of a warning than anything.

This one proclaims that this book is for teenage readers who like romance, exciting battles and magic. Well, thats all fine and dandy, but tell me, will said teenagers actually like this book? Is this book any good? All this quote does is tell me the target demographic printed at the bottom of the press release. And how do we even know that its right in the first place? Im of half a mind to write a book of haiku about my cat (an imaginary cat, since I dont have one), and send it off to the Daily Telegraph with the same demographic information appended just to see what they say.

Heres a curious comparison quote. As moving and tragic as it is refreshing and scurrilous. Nice enough, I suppose, until you start asking whether its at all refreshing and scurrilous in the first place. After all, I could say that last months television guide is as eloquent and poignant as it is thought-provoking and timely, and none of those things need be true.

Fortunately this ones saved by the outstanding at the endassuming that nothing was cleverly ellided either before or after that all-important word.

This is perhaps one of the best that I came across in my quick search. Comic novels are difficult to writeit takes a real wit to manage 400 pages of mild, fragrant good humour, the Guardian (although who exactly from the Guardian we dont knowthe mail delivery person?) tells us.

Thank you for that fascinating bit of insight into the writing process, dear Guardian writer person. Let me guess, youve also complimented the author on having their hair cut.

Another giggle-inducing one is this: merits comparison as a stylist with Bertrand Russell. Well, sure. But isnt that true of any type of written prose ever? Im sure a Finnish Dictionary could warrant the same. By the same argument, I warrant comparison with Mr Russell. Im sure hed be happy to plumb the philosophical depths of all of this with me.

Speaking of quotes that say absolutely nothing about the quality of the book in question, we cant go past hotly anticipated. What a strange way to measure the value of something. My dinner every night is hotly anticipated, but that doesnt mean I can cook. (I cant.)

Even poor Isabel Allende has fallen victim to the questionable praise of book jacket blurbs. How about this zinger? Never less than entertaining. And by extension, never more than that either?

Of all the quotes I came across in my quick browse, however, I think that this one sums it all up quite well:

Your turn: have you ever come across a ridiculous or evasive cover quote? Share them in the comments, and feel free to email any pictures of said quotes to readinasinglesitting AT gmail.com. A gallery of shame is definitely warranted.