BookExpo America autographing
Apr. 21st, 2009 12:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eruthrosThe autographing list for BookExpo America just went up, and I read them even though I'm not planning to attend this year. Because the lists are hilarious. Publicists attempt to come up with a pithy statement about the book being autographed in twenty words or less, often (seemingly) without any awareness of how genre, publicity campaigns, and the English language work. As a result, we get such amazing descriptions as the following:
Beautifully illustrated guide for the Sex and the City generation. (Guide to what?)
Epic fantasy and sci-fi series with magic, mysticism, and science. (This describes such a large percentage of the sff lists as to be meaningless.)
A funny and poignant story about a very unlikely friendship. (Again, this describes an amazing quantity of the mainstream fiction lists. It is utterly meaningless! But well done on not identifying a single thing about the setting or genre, guys, seriously.)
A world where few can be trusted. (I think this wins the "Genre? Wait, is it even fiction?" award.)
A military experiment questions the human race in this haunting thriller. (I'm not sure if I'm supposed to take this literally or not -- like, is this Adam-the-demon-robot-human interrogates humans? I suspect it is, instead, that the existence of X in the experiment leads to pseudo-philosophical questions. Could be wrong!)
An instant steampunk zombie classic! (... okay, I'd read it.)
How a Boston terrier gives a new perspective on single parenthood and unconditional love. (Nothing in the description indicates if this is self-help, or fiction with a talking dog, or what.)
A political thriller about ex kgb and suitcase bombs in the US (ex kgb bombs? ex kgb agents? adjective in search of a noun?)
Oh, and this one requires author and title to make me snerk:
Senator Jim DeMint [R-SC], Saving Freedom. DeMint's firsthand account of the unsettling socialist shift.
Beautifully illustrated guide for the Sex and the City generation. (Guide to what?)
Epic fantasy and sci-fi series with magic, mysticism, and science. (This describes such a large percentage of the sff lists as to be meaningless.)
A funny and poignant story about a very unlikely friendship. (Again, this describes an amazing quantity of the mainstream fiction lists. It is utterly meaningless! But well done on not identifying a single thing about the setting or genre, guys, seriously.)
A world where few can be trusted. (I think this wins the "Genre? Wait, is it even fiction?" award.)
A military experiment questions the human race in this haunting thriller. (I'm not sure if I'm supposed to take this literally or not -- like, is this Adam-the-demon-robot-human interrogates humans? I suspect it is, instead, that the existence of X in the experiment leads to pseudo-philosophical questions. Could be wrong!)
An instant steampunk zombie classic! (... okay, I'd read it.)
How a Boston terrier gives a new perspective on single parenthood and unconditional love. (Nothing in the description indicates if this is self-help, or fiction with a talking dog, or what.)
A political thriller about ex kgb and suitcase bombs in the US (ex kgb bombs? ex kgb agents? adjective in search of a noun?)
Oh, and this one requires author and title to make me snerk:
Senator Jim DeMint [R-SC], Saving Freedom. DeMint's firsthand account of the unsettling socialist shift.
