thewayne | I've noticed a trend in paperback books that I really don't like

On the inside cover splash page, all you're getting is sycophantic praise from reviewers of the author's previous books. No chapter excerpt, just a short bit from some review. So you're left with the back cover, and that frequently has one or two reviewer's blipverts there, too. This particularly sucks if it's an author that you are not familiar with. So do you read a reviewer who is head over heels in love with a previous, possibly unrelated, book? Do you open to the beginning and start reading?

Oh, and then you have the authors who rate two or three pages of praise! Why not have a page for an excerpt, THEN have a page or two of suckup?

It bugs me.