Book Blogging

[rhythmaning]

Courtesy of coughingbear, I have been signed up with Blog A Penguin Classic to review a book. The book allocated to me is Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

I can't remember if I have read this. I know I have read other Austen - Emma at a minimum - in my teens. And I have of course been enveloped in other media depictions of the book - the films, the TV series, and the paraodies.

I can't help wondering how easy it will be to remove my knowledge of the book to actually review it (hopefully, intelligently, though I am going to assume that!).

I am also curious about just why Penguin are giving out copies of their books to get people to write about them. This isn't what publishers usually do. Usually, they sell books. (Although all the books that they are including are, I guess, long out of copyright, so they can give them away at no great cost.) These books must have volumes written about them already - there are huge Jane Austen industries working away.

I can only think that Penguin are hoping to gain publicity (and they have already got a lot of people on my flist talking about it), cashing in on the boom in children's books (courtesy of Mr Potter and his earthbound creation, "JK" Rowling) by getting interested adults talking about the classics - and making people think that they need to catch up with classics they missed, or re-read ones they loved.

I often find books hard to write about. (Like many other things!) I am sceptical what I will have to add to the volumes already written about Pride and Prejudice.

Never mind. I'll add another book to the pile to be read!

Comments

[blonde222.livejournal.com]

I think the answer is that Penguin feels like it needs to be doing "something about" citizen journalism and blogging, to show they (and books per se) are not boring and old technology etc, and that this vaguely seemed to fit the bill. Whether it will work or not, who knows. But the cost, and risk, to Penguin is virtually nil.

And as you say, there may be a viral marketing impact, in that bloggers may post their assignments and reviews on their own blogs as well, and get their flists discussing long forgotten (or in my case, with "Tale of Genji", never known) classics.