Blurb it! A game the whole family can play.

"Crisp and crunchy without being too juicy -- I couldn't imagine a better fruit!" -- The apple I had for lunch

"Yet another awesome thing to do with electricity!" -- MIG welding

"You'll never want to write a blurb with one!" -- Exclamation points

Argh, without one.

But really, isn't this what you expected? :)

"Needs dressing, badly!" --Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs.

"The atmosphere is thick enough to slice up and slather with anchovy paste and olive oil." --Vendetta, by Michael Dibdin

"McGuire has created one of the great horror villains of the genre, the kind who eats Chucky for breakfast and gives noogies to Pennywise until it cries Uncle"--An Artificial Night

"You can just about hear Woody Guthrie's guitar and Pete Seeger's banjo in the background on every page." --The Grapes of Wrath

"There were dozens of passages—some on almost every page—that made me stop and pause to contemplate the beauty of language as used even by not-too-bright people and plain-spoken political professionals."--All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren

"It's the Cthullu Feel-Good Book of the Year"--Practical Demonkeeping, by Christopher Moore

"Somewhere, right now, there’s a predator who, having read Stieg Larsson, sees a skinny, vulnerable looking punkish girl on a dark street, and who gulps to himself and decides it would be wise to keep his distance and go after an easier target, like maybe Chuck Norris or Hulk Hogan."--The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

"Reading Sarah Vowell is like being the lucky, lucky kid who gets partnered up for the big history research paper with the quiet, geeky girl who sits in the back row, and who turns out to be infectiously passionate about the subject matter in ways that draw for cultural sustenance on Scooby Doo, President Clinton, and psychological insights about that popular, backstabbing kid with the perfect hair and the soul of a coal miner’s lung." --The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell

"The only book you'll need to read in order to understand science fiction conventions." —Diana Wynne Jones's Deep Secret

"Captures the lure of the alien-yet-familiar and the delight of creating your own world. This almost makes me want to go out and play an MMORPG, and I hate those things." —Diane Duane's Omnitopia Dawn

"If your kids develop magical powers and you want them to behave ethically, make them read this book. Make them read this whole series. It's fun! It's awesome! If it doesn't make you break down sobbing at least once, yeah, right then with the moon, you might not be human. I re-read it every time my brain fucks up, and it makes me all better." —Diane Duane's So You Want To Be a Wizard & series.

"Supposing one day you created a universe. By accident. And you had to teach the beings who inhabited that universe how to rule it wisely and well. If you're Captain Kirk or the crew of the starship Enterprise, it's all in a day's work." —Diane Duane's The Wounded Sky

"An unflinching look at the history that Vulcans would rather not talk about. If you read one book besides Purpose as Prime Motivator, read this." —Diane Duane's Spock's World

"Every teenager who's too smart for their own good needs to read this right now. I re-read it every time my brain fucks up, and it makes me all better. My copy is bound in duct tape because the cover fell off, and I carried it with me out of a tsunami warning zone." —C.J. Cherryh's Cyteen

"FUCK YEAH CYBERPUNK. WHERE THE HELL ELSE ARE YOU GOING TO SEE A BIRACIAL KATANA-WIELDING HACKER WORKING FOR THE MOB DELIVERING PIZZA AND HELPING HIS LADY FRIEND SAVE THE WORLD'S BRAINS FROM GETTING HACKED ALL TO HELL?" —Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash

"If you read one book ever about a fictional society with a severe shortage of water, read this one. If you read one book ever about teenage angst, read this one. I re-read it every time my brain fucks up, and it makes me all better." —John M. Ford's Growing Up Weightless

"Haters gotta hate. Irwins gotta poke things with sticks. Zombies gotta eat brains. Bloggers gotta blog." —Mira Grant's FEED

"How to fuck up your career completely and irrevocably in three easy steps, by Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, aged twenty-nine-and-three-quarters." —Lois McMaster Bujold's Memory

"A first contact novel done so skillfully, the alien culture so fully realized, sometimes the humans seem the more alien." - Amy Thomson's _The Color of Distance_.

Think Jason and the Argonauts meets The Odyssey in the Bermuda Triangle--Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters.
The Iliad meets The War of the Titans--in Manhattan!--Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Last Olympian
If you've ever wondered. . . what dragons do in their spare time, read this!--The Two Princesses of Bamarre

Wow, the head games! Do it to me more, please, lady! -- Holly Black's The White Cat

I just started it today, and -- wait, what do you mean, I've read it all and have to wait months for the next one? No fair! -- Seanan McGuire's Late Eclipses

With apologies to all of the marvelous books by all of the marvelous authors -- this one was the best book I've read this year -- Karen Lord's Redemption in Indigo

Er, well... maybe except for this one. -- Carla Speed McNeil's Voice

This one made me cry the way I really needed to after my father's funeral. -- Peter Beagle's We Never Talk About My Brother

Okay, so, some day, I'm going to stop pretending I'm not crying when I get to the end of this story. -- Ted Chiang's "Exhalation" (which I have now read aloud about three times)

So, thanks for recommending this one, Seanan -- you were totally right. -- Bill Willingham's Peter and Max

So, your kid's too young for The Orphan's Tales? Start the kid on this one. Plus, it gives adventures to the sorts of people who usually have to stay home. -- Grace Lin's Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

On page one, I was laughing my head off. By the end, I was moved to tears. -- Nancy Springer's Dusssie

You know, if she'd just cut about two hundred pages of Harry Potter and the Blair Witch Endless Camping Trip, there's a lot to like in this book -- J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

All I know is that I went to read one chapter before bed, and suddenly I was in chapter three. -- Gene Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer

When I bought this, the bookseller told me, "When you reach the last page, you will laugh so hard!" He was totally right. -- Jack Vance's The Face, fourth of the Demon Princes books.

So, retelling of the Arthurian saga with a present day setting and cast isn't too hard to pull off at least well enough. Doing that with the Grail material? That's trickier. Doing it with the Percival version of the Grail tale? Wow. I wouldn't want to try. But, the author tackles it, taking on the hardest parts of the story, and makes it ring true. -- Catherine Fisher's Corbenik

Wow, I love what you've done with my city! -- The Fisher King, the movie

It's The Wizard of Oz! No, really! -- H. P. Lovecraft's Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

Oh! This is what White Wolf was aiming for with Changeling: The Dreaming. They missed by a mile. -- Charles de Lint's Jack of Kinrowan

So, imagine a shared world anthology series where folks thought carefully about where it was going, how it would get there, and where the series would end, and then made it so, ending it on precisely the right note. -- The Liavek anthologies

Not every story was to my taste, but there was not a bad story among them. Heck, there was not even a merely okay story among them! -- The SFWA European Hall of Fame

When I read the original trilogy, I was amazed. Apart from some outdated notions of gender roles, it aged pretty well. Then, I read the fourth one, which had just come out in paperback. Except for correcting the outdated notions of gender roles, it was dated. -- Isaac Asimov's Foundation books

I laughed so hard reading this that my brother came running upstairs to my room to make sure I was all right. -- Richard Armour's Twisted Tales from Shakespeare

Thanks!

"Yes, it's like Starship Troopers. But that doesn't make it any less thoughtful or awesome." -- John Scalzi's "Old Man's War."

"I didn't like Dune, but I liked this."
-- Ken Scholes' Lamentation

That was my first semi-coherent reaction, after asdflkjasdlkfj blargle why did you send me all but the last 6 chapters of this I've been up all night reading it please send rest now k thx bai.

Strangely enough, it wasn't chosen for the cover! :D

Oh! And my future-blurb for the next Toby book -- I said this to Boyfriendguy as soon as I finished reading Late Eclipses:

"I can't wait for the hot seal on cat on changeling action!"

(His response: Uh, I think you've got the wrong author for that sort of thing...")

I don't have a blurb, but this is such a fantastic way to get more book recommendations. Thank you!

Now if only I had the time to read them all...

Ever thought 'if only The Catcher in the Rye was actually funny'? Ever needed to be reminded of how friends are what help you survive? Did 'Huckleberry Finn' need more profanity to really float your boat? Have I got a book for you. -- Tales of the Madman Underground, John Barnes.

Addie Pray steals your heart and everything else not nailed down first. -- Paper Moon, Joe David Brown.

Some fiction for young people is the kind that you read and know that it will save a life when it's placed in the right hands. This is one of those books. -- Okay for Now, Gary D. Schmidt.

I want sisters like these. -- The Penderwicks books by Jeanne Birdsall.

It's like the Smurfs meets Inception--Pratchett's The Wee Free Men