Unrelated Very Short Things

1) Song of the week: ‘Million Tears’ by the Pastels

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2) I am working on a project involving blurbs for books that do not exist. One of the potential contributors to the project wrote about her distaste for the blurb as a form. This prompted me to try to articulate what interests me about blurbs. Here is a fragmentary text excerpted and revised from my response:

One of the things that I want the project as a whole to investigate is the ways in which the blurb/back cover text is and is not part of the book, how it can and fails to conjure the idea of the actual book, how some blurbs are more exciting than the texts they describe while others completely under- or mis-sell the books to which they’ve been appended. The blurb, to me, is a fascinating and almost ‘secret’ (or unrecognized or something) literary form.

Is this a blurb for blurbs? Also, does anyone know the etymology of the word ‘blurb’? Is blurb not a singularly ugly word? I think it suggests soot, goop, cynicism and morbid obesity, and yet I will admit that I am a lover of blurbs and like to read them over and over.

Choose Your Own Pt.1

Chapter 1

That ship, over there, broken apart and resting now in the sand, it’s your ship. You were sailing on it with a lover who is now nowhere to be found.

You sit up and look around at this island and at the tooth-marks indented on your arm. You think about how apt the verb ‘indent’ is for describing that kind of a bite, as it summons the latinate origin ‘denta’ for tooth and evokes such appropriate terms as ‘indite’ and ‘clandestine’. Well, there is maybe some hope that such sweet rituals in such thick darkness have the power to mark you still.

An avid reader of adventure stories, you naturally know what to do next. You need to survey your surroundings and make a plan. You rise and TURN TO PAGE 11

Ok, somebody take it from here. I am using the map that Sean posted a few days ago. I am hoping someone will use that map as an outline over which to draw a schematic of Ghost Island that will be printed on the inside cover of the book.

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johuat’s note: Here is the map of the adventure, with written pages marked by red boxes.