[HN Gopher] The case for never reading the book jacket
___________________________________________________________________
The case for never reading the book jacket
Author : pseudolus
Score : 74 points
Date : 2023-11-28 21:25 UTC (1 days 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:
| I do get the impression that French writers take particular
| care on the first paragraph (for just that reason I guess),
| while they will often "just end", like a sudden "fin" 90
| minutes into a 60s New Wave film ...
| dumbo-octopus wrote:
| When the prose is excellent, the genre and theme don't
| matter.
| 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...
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| TIL: #:~:text=
|
| Are there more of these, what is this magic!
| Crespyl wrote:
| It's a "text fragment"; started as a Chrome thing, other
| browsers are slowly adding support.
|
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Text_fragments
| mcmoor wrote:
| So, what actually makes Java successful despite all of these?
| bdw5204 wrote:
| 2 things (in the corporate world): Android and Spring
| framework. It's also basically OOP the language which means
| large enterprises are biased towards it.
|
| Other factors are that it has very strong built-in
| libraries and has become a popular choice for "how to
| program" classes so lots of people are familiar with it.
| Having a similar name to JavaScript (the web's native
| language) also helps.
| n4r9 wrote:
| These are reasons for why an individual hacker might not
| take to a language. They don't factor in to a large
| organisation's choice of language. And to be honest, quite
| a few of these arguments would apply to Javascript as well.
| diego_sandoval wrote:
| At least he was totally right about Java not being a _hacker
| language_.
| 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.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I also would argue that if something is right in the blurb on
| the cover, it is not a spoiler in any meaningful sense. People
| have gotten so obsessed with avoiding spoilers these days, to a
| truly crazy extent. It's one thing to want to be surprised, but
| people get so neurotic about not wanting to know anything
| whatsoever.
| Tor3 wrote:
| That highly depends on the story. There are some stories which
| rely on surprising the reader in a delightful way. If that's
| revealed in the description it'll take away something really
| important. I've seen that many times. It makes reading the part
| up to then look very different, and more boring. In fact I
| don't like to read anything where it's clear where it's going,
| it doesn't have to be because it's revealed in the blurb, it
| can as well be because of the author's writing.
|
| In contrast, for non-fiction a good summary is perfectly fine.
| 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.
| jeffwass wrote:
| I've done this with movies sometimes, it can be a fun
| experience.
| climb_stealth wrote:
| Agreed. I'd say the excerpts on the back of DVDs are
| actually worse than books. Have been burned by those a few
| times. Not that DVDs are that common anymore.
| 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.
| jeffwass wrote:
| I've also seen this with the two sentence blurb about TV series
| episodes on streaming and broadcasting services.
|
| Eg, I was really pissed off seeing Sky TV spoil Game of Thrones
| like this. I browsing TV schedule one night to see was on, and
| accidentally saw a GoT episode summary scroll by : "After the
| death of XXXXX, the characters try to..."
| Loughla wrote:
| Maybe because it was a book already?
|
| Otherwise there's somebody working there that is a monster.
| jamesmontalvo3 wrote:
| I don't even want to see the title of an It's Always Sunny
| episode before the cold opening.
| autoexec wrote:
| Titles don't usually spoil too much. At least the writers
| expect you to see them.
| TheRoque wrote:
| A lot of translated titles contain slight spoilers
| though, for example "predestination" becomes "time
| paradox" in Korean, it immediately gives you a hint of
| some part of the twist.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| At least with Always Sunny the title is usually the
| punchline to a joke they set up in the cold open and then
| drop the title card.
|
| Dee: "No that's a bad idea. Usually when you get involved
| somebody gets hurt."
|
| Frank: "That's ridiculous. I'm just paling around with
| the guys. How is anybody going to get hurt?"
|
| Title Card: "Frank Sets Sweet Dee on Fire"
| autoexec wrote:
| I've seen streaming services spoil an episode with just the
| thumbnail. I can't remember what show's twist was ruined for
| me, but I'm pretty sure it was Netflix.
|
| Netflix also has a really annoying habit of re-ordering
| seasons. For some bizarre reason shows like bake off are
| listed with the most recently added series first. For some
| shows that might not be a huge problem but in the first
| episode of one series they actually recap the winners of all
| previous series, spoiling several years of programing for
| unwary netflix viewers.
| jurip wrote:
| At least one extremely typical problem on Netflix and
| basically every other streaming service is that the episode
| thumbnails (which I usually have to go take a look at just
| to find out how many episodes there are) will ruin any
| cliffhangers. If a character's survival seems uncertain,
| the uncertainty will be lessened quite a bit by seeing
| their face in the thumbnail of a subsequent episode.
| 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.
| mostlylurks wrote:
| Cover art is not unconnected to the work itself. It correlates
| fairly strongly with the stylistic choices made in a book,
| though that correlation becomes more tenuous the more distance
| you add between the author and the selection of cover art, be
| it middlemen in the form of a publisher and a separate cover
| artist or just the passage of time motivating new cover art
| matching the predominant contemporary aesthetic while the
| contents of the book remain unchanged. This correlation is the
| result of at least two factors: 1) that people who have
| specialized into a very specific niche have shared stylistic
| preferences that motivated them to specialize into the niche in
| the first place, resulting in a clustering of aesthetic
| preferences between niches, and 2) that even when middlemen are
| involved, those middlemen will try to align the aesthetics of
| cover art such that they align with the spirit of the book.
| robocat wrote:
| https://www.hilobrow.com/new-wave-sci-fi/
|
| Shows some great cover art
| noqc wrote:
| It is a very natural corollary of not judging a book by its
| cover. Judgment is almost impossible to avoid, so you should
| naturally not expose yourself to it.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| since a self-published author has to write the blurb himself (of
| course, you usually wouldn't even _have_ a dust jacket, unless
| you went to the expense of a hardcover), I 'm curious:
|
| What _would_ you want to see on the jacket?
|
| The first paragraph? That puts an unfairly high burden on the
| first paragraph, IMHO. If a friend is telling you about the book,
| they're almost always going to say more than would fit in those
| few paragraphs.
| Izkata wrote:
| The best sci-fi and fantasy ones for me have focused on
| describing the setting and then a very broad summary of the
| first few chapters. Typically little-to-nothing about the
| overall plot (just what would happen in those chapters), let
| alone the middle or ending.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I briefly chatted with Chris Hitchens a few times, and during one
| of them, he extolled the virtues of never, ever reading a book
| jacket, or foreward before reading the source material.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| It's so incredibly hard to find some older texts without some
| modernist forward lecturing us about a previous age. Just give
| me the text I'll make up my own mind.
| cafard wrote:
| Some years ago, I gave a family member the NYRB printing of
| _Butcher 's Crossing_ by John Williams. The thank you note
| said that he had loved the book, but hated the introduction.
| I told him that I had been vaguely aware that book had an
| introduction, but hadn't read it and still might not.
| Generally, I don't read introductions, unless they are by the
| author.
| tshaddox wrote:
| When I was in middle school I found my mom's 1984 edition of
| Nineteen Eighty-Four. The back cover had some phrase like
| "engrossing from the first sentence to the last 4 words."
|
| If the cover had just said "engrossing from beginning to end" it
| wouldn't have tempted me, but specifically saying "4 words" made
| it irresistible!
|
| I think I made it through half of the book before I broke down
| and skipped to the end. It's undoubtedly a spoiler, but certainly
| not an unexpected twist.
|
| I still finished the book and was indeed engrossed by the
| concepts for a few years.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| For those who don't remember it, the final four words are "He
| loved Big Brother." Had to look that up as well.
| spinach wrote:
| OP clearly didn't include the words because it's a spoiler...
| jeffhuys wrote:
| Thanks eh! Still had that book on my list to read. :/ dude...
| burnished wrote:
| Don't fret, its more along the lines of a punchy ending
| than a twist. I wouldn't expect that knowledge to damage
| your enjoyment of the book
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I went through a phase in high school where I'd read the last
| sentence of a book first, and then begin it. It was actually
| pretty fun because it usually doesn't spoil very much. I
| stopped because once I did end up spoiling something major.
| Don't remember what though.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Me too. I did this for Lord of the Rings. It didn't spoil
| anything!
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I'll add to this - don't read reviews.
|
| The idea that the opinion of some critic at a big newspaper has
| anymore weight or merit than anyone elses opinion makes no sense
| at all.
| autoexec wrote:
| I think reviews can be really useful when they're at the
| extreme of either end of the scale. Books with a positive blurb
| from an author I like can sway me, even though I'm sure they're
| paid for that and don't always read what they recommend.
|
| I use reviews all the time for movies. I also don't put much
| faith in individual critics, but when the overall consensus of
| critics and internet randos suggests that a movie is terrible,
| it's probably terrible.
|
| Negative movie reviews are more helpful than positive ones. A
| bad film might get overwhelmingly good reviews because it's got
| some political value or is considered "important".
|
| Reviews for kid's movies are generally pretty honest when
| they're terrible, but some reviewers will inflate the scores
| based on how much they think it will appeal to kids so the
| middle ground in that genre is risky.
|
| Good horror and sci-fi movies routinely get bad reviews from
| people who are just put off by the genre, so when horror or
| sci-fi films get wide acclaim they're probably worth checking
| out (although again, politics can throw this off).
| KittenInABox wrote:
| > Books with a positive blurb from an author I like can sway
| me, even though I'm sure they're paid for that
|
| FYI at least in fiction books, the author is rarely if ever
| paid to blurb a book. They're just offered an advanced copy
| or ebook and like it, they'll send a blurb back to the
| publisher.
| coliveira wrote:
| Agreed. I never found any value in reading reviews before
| watching a movie. I may read them after if I want to see what
| others think, but it is rare.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I use reviews because life is too short. There will be more
| books I don't read than books I do. However, I've found that a
| mere recommendation from a geek is enough to find good science
| fiction. I don't have to read long or professional reviews. For
| films I have to use reviews, though. What the general public
| recommend tends to be completely crap for some reason.
| Tor3 wrote:
| Agreed. That goes for a lot of things. Around here there's a
| huge film festival once a year, thousands of visitors plus the
| town's population will fill the streets and watch movies all
| day and late night. What I've found is that it's pointless to
| read the daily updates by critics in the newspapers. It's like
| they're nearly always completely disconnected from what's
| actually good, for most people. As I'll have to shotgun-shop
| tickets during the festival week it's a good idea to have some
| indication of what I'll choose - as these are almost always
| totally unknown movies (and in general no Hollywood movies).
|
| What works, for me and many others, is to simply listen to what
| people are telling each other while hanging around in a cafe or
| walking in the streets. Then pick movies from that. If they
| recommend a movie, get a ticket. I've watched astounding movies
| that way. In contrast, the critics.. meh. Most of the time.
|
| One more thing about critics.. occasionally there's a little
| introduction by someone before the movie starts. If that person
| happens to be a critic then there's only one thing to do: Plug
| your ears and sing "nananana" to yourself until he or she is
| done. EVERY critic seems to have this extreme urge to reveal
| crucial parts of the plot. Only the critics do this, other
| people don't.
| timeagain wrote:
| This is a little bit more true in the world of online reviews
| by random strangers. But if you find a reviewer that you "know
| well" they can be a godsend. You know their quirks, you know
| what you liked and they didn't, etc. then a new review is full
| of this extra information. Their review isn't a yes/no
| recommendation, it is parallax you can use to better understand
| if you will like it or not.
| zwieback wrote:
| I usually read books recommended by other people, articles,
| goodreads, bookclub, etc.
|
| However, when I'm browsing in the library I always go by jacket
| art and blurb, then read a few random passages. How else to sift
| through dozens of books to find the one I want to invest my time
| in?
| Loughla wrote:
| Ask a librarian!
|
| They always have amazing suggestions based on what you like.
| They're like machines!
|
| Source: my best friend is a librarian. So it might just be him.
| stardom5761 wrote:
| I only read random passages. I only pick books from a few
| favourite publishers, they do the filtering for me.
| johngossman wrote:
| I have two questions for the author of this essay: 1) Does this
| apply equally to non-fiction (the essay seems to be about
| primarily about novels) 2) Does she finish most books or does she
| quickly abandon the ones that don't click?
|
| My biggest problem is that there are far too many books to read
| and I'll take almost anything that helps me winnow the list. So
| yeah, knowing what it's about helps.
| lalaithion wrote:
| When I was a child, I voraciously reread all of my favorite books
| over and over, and I loved the book jackets because - well, they
| were an extra few words from my favorite books to enjoy!
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Just for the irony, here is a book jacket for the write of the
| article, who is saying it is best to never read one :-)
|
| https://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/onix/cvr97...
| boznz wrote:
| After making a good cover, picking your eight key search words
| and writing a good catchy summary is probably the hardest part of
| the authoring process. I have had about ten goes now for my book
| but none have managed to generate more than a couple of clicks.
| It is a lot harder than it first seems and the search algorithms
| for new authors are not your friend.
| Finnucane wrote:
| I have written and edited jacket copy. Part of the fun is that it
| is derived from catalog copy, and may not have been written with
| the manuscript in hand. the most fun is making a terrible book
| seem not so terrible. And when you're doing it freelance, you
| have to do it fast, because the pay is a pittance.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I don't mind if the text describes something I will read anyway
| in the first charpter or two... Like "Hercule Holmes and his
| sidekick Barnaby Watson go to africa for a vacation and find a
| dead body on the bus! Which of the passangers could be the
| murderer?" and then, after that, the mystery begins.
|
| What i really really hate is "a book with a plot twist in the end
| that'll make you reread the whole book again!" ... why do I need
| to know that there will be a plot twist? Now i'll expect it, and
| know that the 'obvious' murdeder isn't the one guilty of murder,
| but some twist will change everything.
|
| Same for the movies... where the trailer has enough spoilers to
| see how the movie ends and who the murderer is.... it sucks...
| and it's not even a columbo-like movie, where you see the murder
| in the first scene, both you and Columbo know who the murderer is
| 2 minutes in, and you just wait to see how he "gets him"...
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >What i really really hate is "a book with a plot twist in the
| end that'll make you reread the whole book again!" ... why do I
| need to know that there will be a plot twist?
|
| obviously book jackets exist for marketing purposes, I'm
| supposing there is a market of people who like to know that
| there will be a tricky plot twist so they can see if they can
| guess.
| parenthesis wrote:
| I think a movie trailer should be a mini-prequel to the movie,
| with no footage from the movie itself.
| hkrgl wrote:
| I have discovered and enjoyed so many books by reading the book
| jackets, which I would not have, if I only followed
| recommendations. I feel like doing this actually lets me make my
| own judgements about a book instead of restricting myself to
| lists or recommendations of "good" books.
| hilux wrote:
| I completely agree, and I'm glad someone wrote so eloquently
| about this.
|
| I listen to a lot of audiobooks (often for book clubs), i.e.
| which don't require handling a physically printed cover, and I've
| really enjoyed the experience of figuring out "what is this book
| about, and who even are the main characters??", that would have
| been completely robbed by even a quick perusal of the book
| jacket.
|
| Oh, you want to know what I'm reading now? Everything by Irvin
| Yalom. _Lying on the Couch_ is a good place to start.
| nicbou wrote:
| This has been my approach to most media. I don't watch movie
| trailers. I just trust recommendations and go in blind.
|
| With books I'll only get the roughest idea of what they're
| about and start reading. This has worked really well for
| fiction, but not so well with non-fiction. There is a lot of
| really tedious non-fiction out there.
|
| I'm currently enjoying The Overstory. In the non-fiction
| category I'll recommend anything by Bill Bryson.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| > In the non-fiction category I'll recommend anything by Bill
| Bryson.
|
| Please no. Bryson's _The Mother Tongue_ is one of the worst
| pop-sci books on linguistics ever published, with a factual
| error or urban myth on nearly every page. Because, after all,
| Bryson is a journalist and a humorist and not any actual
| expert in that field. As entertaining as some of his other
| books may be, I suspect that he plays fast and loose with
| facts there as well.
| hilux wrote:
| Thanks. I detest that guy's stuff, but didn't know how to
| say so as nicely as you did.
| erehweb wrote:
| Tangential - I used to go to a film club where they would show
| you a movie and you would have no idea at all what it was going
| to be. That added a lot to the experience.
| henry2023 wrote:
| I don't like tweet-chains (x-chains?) that should be a blog post.
| I also don't like blog posts that should be a tweet.
| ikrenji wrote:
| same applies for movie trailers. don't watch them
| dudul wrote:
| I dont have a link handy but I remember seeing a study showing
| that movie/TV trailers that spoil the content (ie basically show
| you a 3min summary of the movie) were more successful in getting
| people to the theater. People seem to want to know before hand
| what they're about to watch.
| nerdponx wrote:
| For $20 and 2 hours of my time, I think I at least want to know
| if the movie is going to be good. Trading off some element of
| surprise for less risk of feeling like I wasted my time and
| money.
| cpeterso wrote:
| Related: a couple studies have shown that spoilers actually
| _increase_ people's enjoyment of the book or movie, even for
| mysteries or stories with twist endings. If a story's enjoyment
| relies entirely on one secret that isn't supported by the build
| up to the reveal, that's a flimsy story.
|
| https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/spoiler-alert-sp...
| seanhunter wrote:
| I don't think that conclusion tells the whole story. If you
| take a great movie with a very famous twist in in it, they
| are not good because of the secret/twist, but the
| secret/twist definitely has greater power if you don't know
| it beforehand.
|
| For example, there are some movies like The Prestige, The
| Crying game and The Usual Suspects there is a set up and when
| the twist happens, you look back and realise the movie was
| hinting at it at various points but you didn't expect it. If
| you knew, you would see the hints much more easily and the
| look back would not be as fun. This sort of has the same
| impact as a magic trick. It's fun to be fooled.
|
| Some other movies like Se7en, Chinatown and "Easy Rider" I
| would call "bolt from the blue" where the impact is mostly
| like being punched in the guts. It's not fun but again if you
| are not emotionally prepared by knowing what will happen it
| is much more powerful.
|
| I wouldn't say any of those had a flimsy story. In in all
| cases the enjoyment comes from the writing, direction,
| performances etc all being of a very high standard, not just
| from the twist. The twist really adds something though.
| aunwick wrote:
| Because the author didn't write it? You're welcome.
| MonkeyIsNull wrote:
| I remember reading Ender's Game and being blown away by it when I
| was younger. Years later I picked up a new edition of it in a
| bookstore and read the back cover. The spoiler is right there.
| IMO that ruins the entire book if you know. I still can't believe
| the publishing house did that.
| Tor3 wrote:
| Things like that is why I too always tried to avoid reading
| back covers or jackets. Way too often they reveal crucial parts
| about the story. Spoiling Ender's Game makes reading the book
| 90% pointless.
|
| I also avoid film trailers like the plague, except for pure
| zero-content entertainment and visuals-only stuff like Marvel
| movies (to the extent I even bother with them anymore). Every
| other type of trailer I block or avoid watching. One problem I
| remember having with British TV series, in particular Doctor
| Who, is that they would spoil the next episode by showing a
| trailer of it in the previous one. In the end it made me stop
| watching it altogether.
|
| For books of (to me) unknown authors I'll read the first couple
| of pages, that'll quickly reveal if they're of the "show" or
| "tell" type of authors, and other things about their writing
| style. Other than that I'll try to skim the headline of the
| summary but avoiding reading more than the bare minimum to get
| an idea about what it's about but nothing more. Sometimes I
| read books completely without any idea about what's it going to
| be about.
| protocolture wrote:
| Unfortunately my DNR pile is way too large as it is. If I didnt
| use a summary of the book to strike it out before reading it, my
| DNR pile would probably put some hoarders to shame.
| keiferski wrote:
| I've generally found that reading a random page in the book is
| most indicative of whether I'll like it. Especially with well-
| reviewed, famous authors that have awards and laudatory quotes
| all over the book cover.
|
| For example, I picked up a book by Salman Rushdie, thinking "he's
| an award-winning author and this plot summary seems interesting."
| But after reading a few pages, I simply can't get through the
| style...it's not for me.
|
| This is something that oddly enough isn't covered in book review
| magazines like the NYRB or LRB, which don't contain excerpts.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| It's interesting how this post seems to implicitly assume that
| all books are fiction, but my implicit assumption tends to be the
| opposite. I don't understand why people read fiction when you can
| read about things which actually happened. I try to enjoy
| fiction, but there's always a little voice in my head saying: "Is
| that actually realistic?" With reading history, that doesn't
| happen. And nonfiction provides useful knowledge too.
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| fiction can explore ideas in a way that non-fiction cannot.
|
| What if humans achieved a post-scarcity society? Lets explore
| that idea ... turns into Star Trek. If you relegate yourself to
| purely non-fiction you can never explore that idea in a
| meaningful way.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| I dunno if that's true, have you read Superintelligence for
| example? https://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-
| Strategies-...
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| it's obviously true, fiction can explore everything non-
| fiction can but the reverse is not true.
|
| If that ever stops being true then the categories stop
| having meaning.
|
| It's not an issue that you prefer non-fiction, the book you
| posted is philosophy and many people enjoy it. But I've
| explained the appeal of fiction to you, take it or leave
| it.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Similarly I avoid watching trailers for films. Not only are they
| obnoxious pieces of marketing, they ruin how the film maker
| intended the work to be received. Often they seem to have no
| respect for the film maker at all. I love just letting the story
| unfold before me.
| knallfrosch wrote:
| I Pick up the book in the book store, open the middle and start
| reading. If I'm still reading it 5 minutes later, I'm buying.
|
| It really is that easy.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| I rather read at the start.
| zgs wrote:
| The inside front cover blurb for Bored of the Rings is quite
| entertaining and bears no resemblance to the contents in the
| slightest. By not reading the jacket, you'd miss this little gem.
|
| "Do you like what you doth see . . . ?" said the voluptuous elf-
| maiden as she provocatively parted the folds of her robe to
| reveal the rounded, shadowy glories within. Frito's throat was
| dry, though his head reeled with desire and ale. She slipped off
| the flimsy garment and strode toward the fascinated boggie
| unashamed of her nakedness. She ran a perfect hand along his
| hairy toes, and he helplessly watched them curl with the fierce
| insistent wanting of her. "Let me make thee more comfortable,"
| she whispered hoarsely, fiddling with the clasps of his jerkin,
| loosening his sword belt with a laugh. "Touch me, oh touch me,"
| she crooned. Frito's hand, as though of its own will, reached out
| and traced the delicate swelling of her elf-breast, while the
| other slowly crept around her tiny, flawless waist, crushing her
| to his barrel chest. "Toes, I love hairy toes," she moaned,
| forcing him down on the silvered carpet. Her tiny, pink toes
| caressed the luxuriant fur of his instep while Frito's nose
| sought out the warmth of her precious elf-navel. "But I'm so
| small and hairy, and . . . and you're so beautiful," Frito
| whimpered, slipping clumsily out of his crossed garters. The elf-
| maiden said nothing, but only sighed deep in her throat and held
| him more firmly to her faunlike body. "There is one thing you
| must do for me first," she whispered into one tufted ear.
| "Anything," sobbed Frito, growing frantic with his need.
| "Anything!" She closed her eyes and then opened them to the
| ceiling. "The Ring," she said. "I must have your Ring." Frito's
| whole body tensed. "Oh no," he cried, "not that! Anything but . .
| . that." "I must have it," she said both tenderly and fiercely.
| "I must have the Ring!" Frito's eyes blurred with tears and
| confusion. "I can't," he said. "I mustn't!" But he knew resolve
| was no longer strong in him. Slowly, the elf-maiden's hand inched
| toward the chain in his vest pocket, closer and closer it came to
| the Ring Frito had guarded so faithfully . ."
| jbstack wrote:
| That can be solved by reading it after reading the book instead
| of before.
| MaggieDane wrote:
| This is a real toss-up! On one hand, you've got those quirky
| blurbs like in 'Bored of the Rings' that are just for laughs,
| totally off-script from the actual book. But then, there's the
| spoiler territory - like revealing a plot twist on the jacket,
| basically turning the reading experience into a predictable
| journey. And who can forget the 'Ender's Game' debacle? A major
| plot reveal on the back cover? Talk about a literary facepalm.
| So, it's a gamble - sometimes the jacket adds flavor, other times
| it's a total spoiler fest
| omgmajk wrote:
| I don't "get" spoilers. Like I don't care at all. Sometimes I
| will read a book and think it's getting too slow so I will jump
| on youtube and see a summary or head to a fandom wiki article or
| whatever. And then I will happily read it again. Spoilers do not
| spoil anything for me and I don't get why it would spoil anything
| for others.
|
| People recommend me stuff and tip-toe around not to spoil
| anything and I will tell them to tell me all of it, I want to
| know if I should invest time into this thing they are
| recommending. Every single time people tell me no, read it, and
| don't respect the idea that someone is different from them. Give
| me the contents or I won't read it at all.
|
| I am used to others not wanting spoilers, and it seems I'm quite
| unique in this regard, so I generally try to never spoil stuff,
| but I still don't quite get it.
| pragmatick wrote:
| I'm on the other side of the scale, I don't want to know
| anything about a book or movie. I often don't even look at the
| posters, never mind trailers. I just need the genre of a book
| and to know if it's good.
|
| The reason is just that I want to go in surprised. Very often
| I've read books or watched movies that I probably wouldn't've
| because I thought "that story is dumb" or "that setting isn't
| for me". I don't want to read a book and think "When do we get
| there?". I've even disabled the progress display on my Kindle
| because I don't want to know if what I'm currently reading is
| still set-up or the grand finale. If I know a thriller has 100
| pages left when the murder has been found I know that something
| is still going to happen and that affects how I read the rest.
|
| It may have to do with how much you like being surprised and
| why you read a book. If it's for the prose then the surprise
| doesn't matter. If you enjoy a story well told then the
| surprise doesn't matter. But I like being surprised and going
| into it without any bias and as little prior knowledge as
| possible.
| criddell wrote:
| Are there ever actual surprises though? I remember how
| amazing it was to see movies as a kid and find out about
| Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker's father, but after 40 more
| years of watching movies, surprises are very few and far
| between. I have a better understanding of the language of
| movies.
|
| I agree with you though for whodunit movies where there's a
| lot of misdirection and surprise is the point. But knowing a
| lot about Barton Fink or some James Bond movie doesn't
| diminish my fun.
| mannykannot wrote:
| It is not just a matter of surprise, though - in the
| presence of foreknowledge, it is harder for the author to
| create, and the reader to feel, any sort of dramatic
| tension.
| huytersd wrote:
| Absolutely. I'm "surprised" by every new plot point in
| every book.
| barrysteve wrote:
| There is a decline in big mind blowing conceptual shifts in
| media, like we experienced in Star Wars after decades of
| Spaghetti Westerns. Social and conceptual shifts are
| happening in real time, out in the world now. The big media
| build up to change has been reduced signficantly.
|
| Goldeneye could have been more thrilling if the trailers
| withheld the reveal of Alec Trevalyn as the bad guy.
|
| 1995 was a year where most people couldn't look up movie
| information on the internet... going into the movie theatre
| blind, it would have been awesome to get the secret
| revealed on the big screen.
| omgmajk wrote:
| I very rarely get surprised even if I do read a book from
| page 1 to X and don't read ahead. Not sure why that is.
| omgmajk wrote:
| This is sorta funny to me as when I read I can sometimes skip
| several chapters ahead or to the end of the book, even with
| movies and shows I can watch them in whatever order. What
| happens later in a story has no impact at all on whether I
| will like the road to it. Most of the time I find myself not
| even remembering the parts ahead when I re-read them either,
| or just vaguely remembering them.
|
| I've had it explained to me many many times, the thing about
| surprises and plot twists and whatever but really it doesn't
| phase me at all.
| huytersd wrote:
| If I know the key cliffhanger or major plot point in a book, I
| don't even bother reading it. I can also never really read a
| book or watch a movie/series more than once.
| TillE wrote:
| I used to often flip to the end of the book when I was in the
| middle of reading it, just to get the answer to some question
| that I knew wouldn't be resolved for a while. I wouldn't do
| that with mystery novels, but otherwise yeah spoilers have
| never bothered me.
|
| But I'm someone who has re-read favorite novels dozens of
| times, which I suppose is about appreciating great writing.
| omgmajk wrote:
| I do the same, but also with mystery content. I re-read stuff
| on and off as well. Also re-watch movies and shows too. If I
| like something, I like something.
| corobo wrote:
| For me it takes away from the dopamine of the situation.
|
| If I'm not predicting and anticipating things happening, I'm
| not really getting much out of the story. The edge of the seat
| feeling has been taken away so it feels like it's not really
| worth spending the time.
|
| Oddly enough this somehow still works fine for things I have
| already seen and thoroughly enjoyed - for example I could go
| binge Breaking Bad twice in a row at any time, no bother.
|
| I guess in that case I'm looking forward to the great plot
| points and storylines I know are coming, but if something of
| unknown quality has been spoiled then I don't know the journey
| is good enough to plow through, so there's no anticipation and
| no dopa to be mined.
|
| In summary spoilers take away the dopamine so there's no longer
| any drive or desire to begin consuming it in the first place.
| omgmajk wrote:
| It's like I understand the meaning of what you are saying but
| not really comprehending the feeling of it. I honestly get
| the same edge of the seat feeling with new media as with old
| media, even if I know what is going to happen. I get the same
| dopamine from a good story whether I know about it or not, so
| for me it's always better to know because then I also know if
| it's worth watching or reading.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| I'm also confused by this. I actually dislike the antsy "what
| happens next" feeling, because it's a better-than-even shot
| that the upcoming twist I can feel coming up is just
| disappointing and not worth the buildup. I'd much rather just
| know what's going to happen and appreciate the artistry in
| invoking the buildup, then how the twist is touched on by every
| other part of the narrative.
|
| I also try not to spoil anything for people, but I will almost
| always spoil myself as soon as I get any real interest in
| what's happening, so I'm not distracted away from appreciating
| the craft of it. [It also means if, e.g. the character that
| intrigues me the most dies off early, I can just not
| participate in it.]
|
| For example: The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones is a
| horror novel, which is alright, but the angle of horror it's
| taking is $familiar_theme + $native_framework. Knowing this
| makes me more happy to read the book, not less. Otherwise I see
| some really dumb opinions, like panning The Only Good Indians
| for having native american-centric conflict in it... when it is
| very clear in every jacket, blurb, author bio, etc. about the
| book screams "this is about native american stuff".
| omgmajk wrote:
| I agree with all of this.
|
| >I actually dislike the antsy "what happens next" feeling
|
| This part is especially true for content that is supposed to
| be.. cringe.. embarrassing.. sort of? Like imagine things
| like a comedy or drama that is supposed to evoke those
| feelings. I can't take it. It physically hurts. Sometimes I
| have to pause or stop watching. Eternal Sunshine of the
| Spotless Mind was such a movie, I just couldn't finish it. I
| read about the story instead and figured out what was going
| to happen and then I could watch it, no problem.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| Yes! _Especially_ the cringe! When the twist is cringe
| inducing I also have to put that stuff down and leave for a
| while. I once blind-watched a movie, and some chick in the
| movie screamed upon seeing a surprise corpse that was
| clearly actually a pretty female actor with full hair and
| makeup pretending to be dead. It was so cringe inducing I
| had to leave the theater for a few minutes, in what was
| meant to be a thriller or scary movie or something. If I
| knew the corpse would be there I could at least go 'yep,
| here is the cringe bit, it'll get better later'.
|
| That being said there is work I'm happy to go into blind
| because I _trust_ the creator of the media. I will buy and
| read my favorite authors with no summary or anything, e.g.
| the Murderbot series. I simply trust they have their craft
| down that nothing hits wrong, and chances are good, they
| just pull it off and it all works.
| t_mann wrote:
| Not sure I agree, particularly with the 'I don't want to hear
| about the story' part. I have a bit of a general chagrin with the
| 'no spoilers' obsession. Yeah, there may be works like Game of
| Thrones where the unpredictability is part of the appeal (I
| wouldn't know though, tbf, never watched or read it), but that's
| not universal. Usually when I go to the theater to watch a
| classic play, I try to make sure to read at least a short plot
| summary beforehand, ideally a longer analysis, to be sure I get
| everything that's going on and also have additional context. I'd
| wish for a more general appreciation of the fact that not every
| discussion of a story before you've consumed it needs to be a
| 'spoiler' - sometimes it can actually be an enhancer.
| will5421 wrote:
| This is why a story should have a good title and opening
| huytersd wrote:
| That being said, there's no way I'm picking up a book and reading
| it without atleast knowing what the book is about. I bet no one
| would unless you are already familiar with an author.
| elzbardico wrote:
| > book descriptions have become so bland and tropey that they
| tell us nothing about a title's style or contents. Words like
| "dazzling," "brilliant," and "amazing" have become so ubiquitous
| as to lose all meaning.
|
| There's a reason why tools like GPT seem so good when writing
| marketing, advertising and business copy in general. The problem
| is that this type of content has been for a long time completely
| devoid of... content. Most of this kind of text is formulaic,
| pompous and yet utterly devoid of deep meaning. It is as low-
| entropy as you can get. So, no wonder that a stochastic machine
| can produce this kind of text in a so believable manner.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| So we know it will have achieved general intelligence when it
| can convincingly reproduce >90% of HN comments.
| elzbardico wrote:
| I would be surprised if it couldn't right now.
|
| No matter what we think about ourselves, we're pretty much
| the same here and mostly comment the same stuff based on a
| few niches of beliefs and personal/professional experiences.
| RegW wrote:
| Ah. I was wondering why I can never find anything I want to
| watch on Netflix.
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