Like a clown? I amuse you?

Funny Ha-Ha: a discussion thread

Hello to all my new subscribers, I’m so glad you’re here. I’ll be back in the bookshop on Friday, and I’ll tell you all about it in the free Receipt from the Bookshop then, but in the meantime today’s post is for my paid subscribers. If you enjoy reading my work please consider a paid subscription to access everything. You can pre-order my book, Receipts From the Bookshop here. All Shares, Restacks and Recommendations are really appreciated. Now let’s get to it…

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A lot of people tell me they pay absolutely zero attention to the quotes that appear on the front covers of books. That it wouldn’t matter at all what any eminent author might say about a book, they can disregard it entirely. I am not sure I believe that, but that’s a discussion for another day. There are certainly particular writers who catch my eye if they give a book a recommendation, and often these quotes give us an additional sense of the tone of the book. I find them useful, and I like hearing that a book has moved someone to tears, or blown their minds or, best of all, made them burn with envy. But there are a lot of out-of-proportion words that are thrown around on book jackets, and our collective eyes are numb to them now. It’s actually quite hard to come up with something original to say about books because a lot of them are similar and the words that were used for something else are simply the right words again, but there’s no excuse for calling anything whip-smart these days. There’s one particular word that I think is more dangerous than most though, a fairly innocuous word that feels too bland to make a statement, but the moment it’s in the room, or rather, on the book, there’s a promise of something that is especially difficult to pay off. The word is funny…