Packed full of trade secrets, this is a guide for anyone who loves to read, think about and play with words. Blurb Your Enthusiasm is about those humble 100-or-so words of jacket copy that take seconds to read but can make or break a book – and what they tell us about literary history, the craft of writing, authors from George Orwell to Zadie Smith, genres from children’s fiction to bonkbusters, cover design, the dark arts of persuasion and even who we are as readers,” the synopsis explains. Alexander Waugh - son of Auberon, grandson of Evelyn, and whose book The House of Wittgenstein has just been published - hates blurbing: "I don't want a blurb on the cover of my book.

Curb Your Enthusiasm review – Larry’s back, and funnier than Curb Your Enthusiasm review – Larry’s back, and funnier than

But it's about more than just that and amounts to nothing less than an impassioned love letter to the world of books in general.

There are sections on all sorts of things, including various genres, what makes a good book within them and what makes a good blurb in each case. This will make the perfect gift for anyone who loves to escape with a good book, it will be purchased as a Christmas gift for a few bookworms in my life.

Louise Willder | Oneworld

And I read Coupland's Shampoo Planet partly because of a blurb by Nick Hornby ("A rich, intelligent piece of work"). But the good news is that you don't have to be in the business to find this chunky little hardback enjoyable. A book full of anecdotes from the author’s years of experience in publishing, shared with wit and passion - I can’t recommend it highly enough for enthusiastic readers out there. She has blurbed bestselling romance books, reprints of literature classics, self-help books, mysteries, and more. Each part is divided into punchy little chapters that feel excellently balanced – you’ll want to keep reading, but you won’t get lost if you do have to stop and pick it up again later.This was thoroughly entertaining and has prompted me to pay that bit more attention to the few paragraphs on the inside of a book jacket.

Blurb Your Enthusiasm: A Cracking Compendium of Book Blurbs Blurb Your Enthusiasm: A Cracking Compendium of Book Blurbs

It didn’t do what I half-expected it would (give tips on effective blurb writing) or live up to the puffs on its own cover, which are so far off that I think they must be ironic. Part compression, part come-on, blurbs can also, as I found when I wrote a book about them, open up a world of literary history and wordy joy. Some bear little or no resemblance to the books they describe, such as the gloriously tin-eared 1990s Tor editions of Jane Austen’s novels. It is rich, wise and soul-awaking, exhilarating-like-the-snowman-flying-through-the-air-of-human-gloriousness.Nor did I find real enchantment or have my soul awakened, as two other cover puffs suggested I might. I had vaguely heard of the US TV show 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' - but not sufficiently for it to immediately spring to mind when adding the book to my Christmas list.