Mutual Admiration Society

Lately I've noticed that book authors are writing blurbs for each other.  I guess there is nothing wrong with this-- one author should certainly be able to appreciate another author's work, right?  On the back cover of Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies: 

"Jhumpa Lahiri is the kind of writer who makes you want to grab the next person you see and say, 'Read this!'"-- Amy Tan

And if there seems to be some doubt as to the name recognition value of the reviewing author, you might see something like this, on the back cover of Hannah Tinti's The Good Thief:

"Every once in a while-- if you are very lucky-- you come across a novel so marvelous and enchanting and rare that you wish everyone in the world would read it as well.  The Good Thief is just such a book-- a beautifully composed work of literary magic."-- Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

There also seems to be some effort to match authors with reviewer-authors in the same genre.  On the back cover of Sh*t My Dad Says, by Justin Halpern:

"Sh*t My Dad Says is a really, really funny and addicting book."-- Laurie Notaro, New York Times bestselling author of The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club

(And when did the convention change from underlining to italicizing book titles?  After underlining became a way to indicate a link to another webpage, I suppose.)

I tend to agree with all of these reviews, by the way.  So why does the concept of authors reviewing each others' work make me vaguely uncomfortable?  Because there is potential for this to become simply a marketing tool, if authors write glowing reviews that they don't really mean.

All of this is a long-winded way of prefacing the announcement that Julie Turjoman featured me in the Designer Spotlight on her blog a couple of weeks ago-- it's a follow-up to the interview she included in Brave New Knits.  The cynic in me can't help saying, "You interview her, she interviews you-- hmm..."-- but I truly do admire her work (and hopefully vice versa!).