A Blurb For All Seasons

After a perhaps-longer-than-intended hiatus, the Institute is back! And to celebrate our return, we’re thrilled to announce the much-anticipated release of Blurbs, our book-length collection of some of the most famous, most controversial, and most down-right brilliant blurbs throughout English literature! Apropos of the theme, here is, in all its blurby splendour, the blurb for Blurbs:

As long as there’s been books, there’s been blurbs,* and now, for the first time, in this incredibly awe-tastic collection, these blurbs are available at your fingertips. Included in this raunchy, so-good-it’s-shocking-it’s-not-illegal-or-at-least-frowned-upon book are all the blurbs you’ve loved and cherished. Blurbs from your childhood, blurbs over which you’ve had your first love, blurbs that have grabbed you by the lapels and not let go. All your favourite blurb writers are represented: Stew Mac, Julie Plantain, the husband and wife duo of Lester and Tracy Groovy, and, of course, on the eve of his five thousandth blurb, the one and only, the inimitable Brew-ha-ha Barry. Blurbs is arranged into easy to use categories, such as: Poorly Written; Factually Inaccurate; So Hyperbolic it Hurts; and Downright Silly, with the subsection How Did This Ever Get Past the Publisher’s Desk?. So what are you waiting for? Buy this book and read it, all of it, right now! Who knows? These blurbs might just save your sad, boring lives!

Advanced praise for Blurbs:

“This is definitely a book of blurbs.”
– Author’s sister

“I never realized blurbs had such importance in how a book is read and remembered.”
– Tony Bendale, critic-at-large

“I read the first four blurbs and then fell asleep. For like, ten days.”
– Author’s other sister

*This is not technically true, but makes for a very strong opening, in this humble blurb-writer’s opinion.

(Blurbs, Institute Press, 1,437 pages. September 21st 2012)