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Sometimes I read a so-so review of a book, only to find an extract from it quoted on the book itself, or publisher's website, as a positive.

(has to be said this practice seems more endemic to the film industry)

Wonder if anyone has any good examples. Here is a starter for 10:



Taken from two sentences that read in full....
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Indeed, while Noll and his translator Morris' prose frequently has a seductive, noirish quality, the novel is so fatally hamstrung by its inherent lack of substance or point that any stylistic grace only reinforces how fundamentally empty an exercise it is. None of the surreal events in the unnamed narrator's life ever have a significance beyond titillation and transgression, and in its gratuitously sexual and violent episodes, the book often feels more like a 14-year-old's diary than the work of an eminent novelist.

Impressively cheeky!

Amazon (B&N, et al) book pages are a bounty of cherry picking, out of context quoting of reviews because, I assume, the "Editorial Reviews" part of the page is created by the publisher.

Have seen some fun fictional examples of this in novels too, can't remember exactly which ones, but includes books that were already published and in libraries by the 90s.

They say there's no such thing as bad press (especially when taken out of context)!

I would love to see a book that comes with negative blurbs only. That would grab my attention much more likely than any of the clichés you always see adorning covers. Tour de force, please...

Tommi wrote: "I would love to see a book that comes with negative blurbs only. That would grab my attention much more likely than any of the clichés you always see adorning covers. Tour de force, please..."

This seems like something I have seen done, although I think it was a stand-up comedian who only put the worst critical comments on his advertising posters. For some reason I think it might have been Stewart Lee, but I'm not sure of that. He did do a live show with the title "41st Best Stand-up Ever" after a poll awarded him that distinction.

Ian Banks' The Wasp Factory lists pages of negative criticism in it's reprint a few decades after the original.

I remember hearing Mark Haddon reading out some of his favourite 1 star Amazon reviews of Curious Incident.