This week’s Gusher Award for Achievement in Hyperbole in Book Reviewing Goes to …
A review of Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowds’s Our Life in Gardens (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 322 pp., $30) in the New York Times Book Review:
“Once you wander into this book, you won’t be able to sit still for long anyway, what with having to scurry around looking for paper and pen to take notes on just a few more plants you must have, and leaping up to consult the pictures in your American Horticultural Society A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants.”
Sounds like you’d better get that prescription for Xanax or Valium filled before you read this one, doesn’t it?
Gusher Awards recognize over-the-top praise in book reviews. They appear on Fridays except in weeks when no praise was too overheated to qualify.
Other Gusher Awards appeared on Dec. 11, Oct. 31, Sept. 5 and July 25.
One-Minute Book Reviews will announce the winners of the Delete Key Awards for the year’s worst writing in books on Monday, March 16, beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern Time.
© 2009 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
One-Minute Book Reviews 
Wow, that review was so over-the-top I almost thought it was being sarcastic. And who needs to repeatedly “leap up” to consult another book that’s presumably sitting right next to you after the initial frenzy of locating it? Nice find.
Comment by sarahsk — March 13, 2009 @ 5:04 pm |
I sometimes have a similar reaction when writers overuse exclamation points in reviews or books. You wonder: Is this a parody?
Comment by 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — March 13, 2009 @ 11:57 pm |