Chess, you say? Well, two can play at that game

[steepholm]

When blogging in Another Place recently I mentioned the blurb writers’ habit of characterizing books in terms of other books. It quickly became apparent that this could be turned into a parlour game.

For example, which book might be described as “Charlotte’s Web meets The Lord of the Flies”?

Animal Farm


Or “Death of a Salesman meets Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”?

The Chocolate War


I think we can all agree that this is the funnest thing since Tetris, but it’s not the kind of game one can play on one’s own. So, partly in honour of the return of I’m Sorry I haven’t a Clue, partly for the sheer anarchic hell of it, but mostly as yet another displacement activity, who wants to play Guess the Literary Progeny?

All contributions welcome.

Comments

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Are we talking about actual blurbs that appeared on actual books?

My all-time favorite of these is:

"In the tradition of The Lord of the Rings, Siddhartha, and Watership Down."

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

My goodness, what would that be? Surely not The Animals of Farthing Wood!?

But no, real blurbs are very welcome but made-up ones are equally so.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

It's this. Notice blurb replicated in the product description.

I can't make these up. I am unable to warp my brain into the kind of shallowness that would think of Charlotte Web in connection with Animal Farm just because they both take place on farms with sapient animals.

In fact my entire life has been devoted to avoiding the, "Oh, if you like The Lord of the Rings you'll love [insert name of tedious, sloppy trilogy with endless mighty-thewed heroes bopping each other over the head here]" type of thinking. I'm too bitter about this even to make a game of it.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I notice the one thing it didn't remind them of was Parsifal... (Sorry, my brain warps into shallowness all too easily.)