He declaimed that "Book people are really not actors, and there's a realization now that we should not try to reward things like who did the best book blurb."

Since book blurbs are commonly written by some of our best writers, they illustrate how badly even a fine writer can write when straining to pump out advertising copy for another writer's book.

Writers don't tell the world which colleague wrote that asinine book blurb.

But of course the really condemnatory thing about it is how practised the young state senator clearly was, even 11 years ago, at writing cliched book blurbs.

Half the cultural coverage in the broadsheets looks like it has been written by people with bad 2.2's whose cultural horizon doesn't extend beyond reading book blurbs.

"Ouch" seems book blurb enough for this sort of thing.

In 1985, in The New Republic, Ann Hulbert recoiled from the witless use in book blurbs of "the B-word" (brilliant).

Add the publisher's love of 'book blurbs' here as well.

Between 1999 and his death in 2003, she and Clive Prince worked with Stephen Prior, described in book blurb as "a historian specialising in intelligence matters".

Don't have a go at Ms Edelstein - anyone who's cool enough to put a photo of the Dover "This is a permanent book" blurb on their blog is fine by me.