/lit/ - Literature

>>20242809
>Can you really get an accurate idea of the quality of an author's writing just from a random, out of context sample?
Yeah of course. For a writer to be any good at their craft he needs to have an understanding of the basic mechanics of composition. Such an understanding will be present throughout his work if he holds that competency.
Imagine you are trawling through youtube and come across a compilation of clips from a tv show. If its a sitcom and non of this clips you watch are very funny then its easy to disregard the entire thing. For if the baseline competency of a particular work is not present throughout, how can the rest of the work be considered good and well constructed? Would you want to live in a house with a poorly made foundation?

I can tell if I will like a book within a page or two. Although, really, it's even less than that. By the first paragraph I've judged the whole book.

>>20242809
>Is this actually a thing?
yes
>Can you really get an accurate idea of the quality of an author's writing just from a random, out of context sample?
no

>>20242809
>Is this actually a thing? Can you really get an accurate idea of the quality of an author's writing just from a random, out of context sample?
Yes. It's how I decide to buy books I don't otherwise know anything about. I open to a random page and read it. If I want to know what happens next, I buy it. You can tell if something tastes good after taking a single bite, can't you? Maybe the rest of the dish is better, or the chef can cook a different dish better, but if they can't convince you to keep eating after that first mouthful, then you can be mostly certain they're just not good enough to waste your money on.

>>20242809
Years ago a buddy of mine told me that he thought that Ready Player One was the best book ever, so I read it and realised that he is utterly retarded

>>20242809
I do this so I can claim I've read the book

>>20242809

There is a certain low potential demographic of adult men that play video games on budget devices intended for low income single parent children. This is the target demographic of for Ready Player One.

>>20243958

The target demo for RPO was Gen-X nerds who can't bear the truth that nobody born later than them's gonna give a shit about their stupid pop-culture crazes. Least of all fucking '80s videogames. Amos 'n' Andy'll be more popular in the 2040s than anything Atari ever made.

It's the least realistic, most masturbatory fantasy novel untied to LaHaye and Jenkins.

I unironically bought and read ready player one before I knew I was supposed to despise it but I also was pretty ignorant to all its pop culture references so I didn't really mind them

>>20242809
I'm the one that took a picture (years ago now) of the Monty Python scene that gets posted on here from time to time. Reading that single page is bad enough to warrant never reading anything by Ernest Cline again.
>>20244428
It was so bad it soured me from reading science fiction ever since

>>20242809
>and of course, Kevin Smith

>>20242809
its unironically good, people just hating on it because muh reddit likes it i must be le angry contrarian, but they probably havent read a single page of it
the sequel is a trash though

>>20244704
>its unironically good
no its not. No matter how you look at this, this book is absolute irredeemable garbage. The fact that Ernest Cline was ever willingly published in print is proof that the publishing system, as it currently stands, is suffering from severe retardation and needs to be demolished and rebuilt from the ground up.
The fact that there are actual people who read this trash and enjoyed it is somehow not surprising; the fact that these retards are currently using this site and this very board is deeply unsettling

>>20242809
>Ready Player One

Fuck Ready Player One. It's Snow Crash fanfiction and a lousy one at that.