A fantastic premise—a collection of fake forewords for fake books. Simple, yet unique and fertile ground for creativity.

The topics range across a great amount of popular genres (true crime, science, biographies, sports) and the contributors writing in as either themselves or in character. It’s not a long read, and none of the foreheads really drift into long-winded territory, checking that box in terms of keeping attention. Introductory pieces by the arranger/author help things to spark and do a neat job of ushering in sections, truthfully being funnier than a great number of the forewords meant to have a comedic tone.

Speaking of tone, take care to notice that, while this book features a boatload of comedians and approaches meant to take the air out of some of the more heady and self-important titles/subjects out there, that there are some entries that don’t fall within that category. You’ll be mightily confused if you scroll across some of these thinking you’re in for a laugh. The book titles and author bios assist greatly in calibrating you.

Chattman amassed one incredible group of writers across a wide spectrum of celebrity and craft. The cover naturally needs to divulge a few to get you on board, but discovering them as I come upon their submissions was a treat unto itself.

As a side note, the foreward by James Adam Shelley could be a super-duper indie dramedy.

It’s a 3.5 star recommendation, really, because, while I’d be impressed at who was writing, a lot of these were admittedly kind of “meh”. Didn’t hurt to read them, but weren’t a shot in the arm or sensational, either.

If you are enticed, give it a read.

Many thanks to NetGalley and BenBella Books for the advance read.

Very sorry this was withdrawn. I would like to review it. It suddenly just disappeared when I went to download it.

[edit]
The notion of forewords to books which don't exist is an appealing one – equal parts Borges and Nate Crowley. But this is the second time I've been massively underwhelmed by a collection of them. Stanislaw Lem's attempt was too dry and abstruse even for my tastes, while this one is just painfully unfunny. Time after time, ideas are mooted which you can see might work as a sketch, but which fall leaden to the page; as a leaf's skeletal imprint to a leaf, so these to jokes, the structure without the life. Some of them aren't even that, coming across more like ribbing of a mate of the author than anything the rest of us need to read. A few even try to be serious, and those are possibly the most pointless of the lot (barring one gently eerie attempt by, of all people, one of Hall & Oates, which is by some measure the best thing here). Possibly I should have paid more attention to the list of contributors, which mixes comedians, writers and musicians, but on reflection doesn't feature that many acts I particularly like. And of those it does, I've already forgotten We Are Scientists' contribution, although Shirley Manson's is by far the highlight of a crime section which otherwise largely proposes books functionally indistinguishable from dozens which already exist, when surely the point of a project like this is to hint at those which could not. Elsewhere, a history of the end of comics squanders a strong notion by a complete failure to note that the major superhero companies already do belong to enormous multimedia empires, and more than one contributor thinks 'writer of foreword admits not having read the book' is sufficient. Very poor.

This was an engaging and entertaining book, I loved the humour and the style of writing.
Recommend!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine