[HN Gopher] The Case for Never Reading the Book Jacket ___________________________________________________________________ The Case for Never Reading the Book Jacket Author : pseudolus Score : 15 points Date : 2023-11-28 21:25 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (thewalrus.ca) (TXT) w3m dump (thewalrus.ca) | jjgreen wrote: | French novels quite often have just the first paragraph of the | book on the (back) cover, I think that works rather well (and I | have bought books by unknown authors on the strength of that). | jowea wrote: | That might indicate if you like the prose, but that only really | works if the author makes 100% sure to indicate what's the | genre and theme of the novel already on the first paragraph? | jjgreen wrote: | Just my personal view, but I do think that French writers put | a lot of effort into the first paragraph (for just that | reason I guess). | bwb wrote: | The article makes the point that I also agree with, most people | buy books because someone loved it and told them about it with | passion. | | And then a small number of "book people" actively seek out books | like it is an adventure, and then filter the winners out to | friends, family, community, and net... | crthpl wrote: | The idiom "Don't judge a book by its cover" applies to many | situations, but books are not one of them. | maxwell wrote: | http://www.paulgraham.com/javacover.html#:~:text=book%20by%2... | lmm wrote: | Meh. Many of the greatest works open by explaining themselves in | miniature (to the extent that it's probably a named literary | technique). If you let your engagement with a work be | circumscribed by what you're told about it beforehand, that seems | more like a you problem. | Wowfunhappy wrote: | I have had so many books ruined by the summary. They will | regularly include details about what happens in even the latter | half of the story. | | I never read them anymore. It's harder to find books, but at | least I don't see literal spoilers. | climb_stealth wrote: | Same. It's also quite a different experience reading a book | without having any idea what it is about. Mostly Sci-Fi and | Fantasy in my case. | | These days I ask my partner to check for other books in a | series. Even just trying to look up the sequels online can | spoil quite a lot. This may sound like a hassle but it's | actually not. | megmogandog wrote: | My personal worst experience of this was Philip K. Dick's _Time | out of Joint_ ; since then I only read the blurbs after I'm | finished. | andy99 wrote: | I'll usually look when I'm buying the book to see if I might like | it. But then I won't look when I actually pick it up go read it. | I'm pretty sure summaries on the back are designed to be used | that way, to help with selection and then be promptly forgotten | to not interfere with reading. | NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: | Maybe it marks me semi-literate, but I've always liked the cover | art. I know that it's absolutely unconnected to the work itself, | but it shows an effort on the part of the publisher that lately | has been sadly lacking, and they're pretty incentivized to hint | at the nature of the story in a way that matters to me. They are | seeking readers for that kind of fiction, after all. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-11-28 23:00 UTC)