/lit/ - Literature

>>4906288
>reading the introduction before finishing the book

>>4906292
i've stopped doing it specifically for this reason. still, introductions should be motherfucking prefaces for what you're about to read, not summaries. put it at the fucking end if it's important to be included at all.

>>4906292
>reading the introduction

>>4906292
>reading some hack's 50 page introduction

>30 page introductions

>being bothered by a concept that didn't exist until the past few decades even though literature has existed for centuries

>>4906288
>the interest of the book lies in the reveal

sounds like you need to start reading literature.

>>4906315
The reveal enhances the experience though, that's why re-reading a book or re-watching a movie, won't feel as good as doing it the first time. ( In most cases)

>>4906315
it doesn't kill my interest, but the pacing and revelation of events in the serial fashion intended by the author is preferable in all good literature. otherwise, if plot points are revealed outside of the book in a different order and context, it feels like i'm just studying the book as opposed to experiencing it.

>front matter
>title page
>preface to new edition
>table of contents
>foreword
>acknowledgements
>introduction
>half title page
>dedication
>epigraph

>actual book doesn't start until like a third of the way into the physical copy of the book

Doesn't matter as long the spoiler has no buildup up to it.
I am going to reread Moby-Dick even thought I mostly know the plot line. Having it read in translation, and enjoyed it, but still not satisfied as I am capable of reading it in it's original prose, I know I will have same pleasure reading through the story and its twists.

>first 50 pages of the book is some bullshit from some guy that isn't even the author
>all he does is talk about how much he likes the book and what kind of dude the author is, all while spoiling it

I picked up the Wordsworth edition of Spinoza's Ethics recently. The intro and translator's preface make up about half the book.

>20 page note from the editor about how to read this book

>>4906322
huh? rewatching and rereading is more enjoyable than the first time...

jesus christ the intro to this edition is fucking worthless. at least it's short.

fuck introductions in general.

>>4906409
Enjoy 50 page comprehensive guides to whale blubber or whale bones, or whale oil, or whales in general every couple of chapters.

on topic, fuck introductions

>>4906591
Why does everyone bitch about this? Once I get off my pomo kick I'm ready for some Moby Dick and the whole whaling information just sounds interesting.

>>4906288
>caring about spoilers because you are twelve

>>4906616
>caring about plot and pacing instead of just the literary significance
yeah, so immature.

>>4906288

Spoiler in the fucking flap.

>>4906616
What's wrong with wanting to read a book the way the author intended it, with the events revealed in the designed order?

>>4906625
why

>reading invitation to a beheading
>about halfway through
>decide to look at the summary blurb on the back cover
>mfw plot twist on which the entire fucking book hinges is given away right there

Holy dickfucking christ how was that allowed to happen? I told my friend about it, and his copy which is a newer edition has the same blurb in the back cover. So this has made it to print TWICE without the publisher giving a shit.

>>4906314
That concept is old as hell, it's just that people came to call it spoiler in the last decades.

>>4906577
The whole book was a piece of shit anyway.
>Muh retard
>Muh drugs
>Muh predicting the future
>Muh trying to be funny-absurd but failing
>Muh SS-Millicent

> Introduction contains an anecdote of the editor buying two ping pong tables and being scolded by a student who wears a leotard

>read the ending of the book first so I know if it will be worth it

>>4906627
Whats wrong in fabricating an arbitrary opinion about what you think the author wanted you to read and see in a work of fiction before you have read the work?

>>4906672
i don't think IJ was at all trying to be an accurate prediction of the future.

>>4906627

That's a trend that has risen recently on /lit/, retards that believe that they're patricians because they "don't believe" in spoilers.

No mentally functioning person struggles to understand why someone would find spoilers to be a bad thing.

>>4906696
>arbitrary opinion of what you think the author wanted you to read
I believe they would want the reader to read the book in the order that they wrote the words, unless they mentioned otherwise.

>>4906715
That's merely an assumption you base on assuming:
> Authors write for readers
> Authors are interested in how their novels are read
> Novels are written chronologically

>>4906696
I'd say you're missing the point and losing out.

If you'll to excuse the terrible metaphores, you're using a toothbrush to peel potatoes, and it doesn't work out, and then you use a nailclip to the same effect, and it performs that function reasonably well, but that doesn't say much about the actual quality of the toothbrush or the nailclip.
You're looking at a painting from a weird angle, and when you do that, wether you like it or not doesn't really depend on how well it performs within its intended context, but simply on how it holds up in a different one.

>>4906730
> Authors write for readers
The norm is that they write and compile the story with the intention that it's read in that order. If they intended otherwise, and intended for it to be read by the public, they'd write it down, and I would have no problem with reading in that order. But claiming that it's supposed to be read in a different order without knowing the author's intentions? That's "fabricating an arbitrary opinion about what you think the author wanted you to read".

> Authors are interested in how their novels are read
I'd imagine a great fucking majority of them are.

> Novels are written chronologically
The order of events can be mixed up, obviously, and I'm not suggesting that you read the events in chronological order; just the order that the author compiled them in.

>>4906730
you're trying way too hard to look patrician and "above" the uneducated plebs who want to read the story in a conventional manner.

>>4906760
No, spoilers are just for Harry Potter genre fiction YA plebs! >:(

>>4906322
>>4906573
It's both. A book with a good twist (not a gimmick one) is designed to be read once in ignorance and again in understanding.

>>4906625
>1984 in hardcover
u y m8

>it was out X years ago, you should know by now!
why is everyone retarded

>Buy copy of The Temple of the Golden Pavillion by Mishima from Goodwill on a whim
>thumb through the introduction
>at the end of it, some dickweed wrote in pen "What a shitty intro. . . So much for spoilers!"
>It's becoming one of my favorite books but now I have to trash it and buy a new copy
Yet. . . thank you obnoxious reader for saving me from spoilers. I love seeing where this book is going

>>4906458
My copy of Heraclitus's fragments is like 20 pages fragments 70 pages commentaries.

That's necessary in this case though.

>>4906730
confirmed retard

Eat shit, faggots.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/spoiler-alert-stories-are-not-spoiled-byspoilers.html

>>4908985
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/appeals-to-authority-are-dum.html

>>4906315
My Brothers Karamazov book had an introduction that spoiled the whole thing. Luckily, I was right in my assumption that is was boring Russian shit that was completely irrelevant to anything. Those two chapters where the intellectual has a fever and talks to the devil and the one where he tells his faggot monk brother Aloysha about the priest telling Jesus that "no matter how many times you hippy degenerate try to come back we're just going to keep killing you because no one in the system care about what you have to say. We're just another government, with a brainwashing philosophy, meant to control the people just like every of religion. So die, faggot," were the only two things worth reading in that book. The rest is four dudes yelling and kissing each other that only fuels the inner faggot sexual tension between them and daddy issues. Also, a whore, a retarded servant, and his even more retarded adopted parents.
Fucking
Stupid
Worthless
Dribble

>>4909744
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/why-anon-is-a-faggot.html

>>4906672
The fact that you took it seriously means you didn't understand it at all.

>>4909782

>>4906330
this
>detailed analysis of the work

>>4910659
>Chronology
>Bibliography

>>4906751

>"The norm is that they write and compile the story with the intention that it's read in that order."
>implying readers should care about author's intentions

Plebbiton

>>4910667
>>4906330
>>4910659

>Appendices
>other books by the same author
>authors you may like if you enjoyed this one
>history of the publisher company's founder (I swear I've seen this one)

>>4906288
"Anna Karenina's suicide marks an important landmark for..."

The introduction STARTED with that. I don't even read introductions, I was flipping past it and managed to read that while I was doing so.

I swear, they're some of the best trolls.

>>4910667

>Note on the Translation
>Additional note on the translation
>Author's note on the 3rd edition of the book
>Appendices - I - XVI
>Maps
>Detailed Glossary

I have the Sandars version of Gilgamesh, which is like 150 pages. The actual epic doesn't start until page 78 or some shit.

>>4910712

I know Penguin, Vintage and Wordsworth (especially the Everyman editions) do this, but I can't think of anyone else doing it (Maybe Oxford?)

I actually don't mind it. I think it's kind of endearing.

>>4910727
>Baghavad Gita
>whole text could be about 30 pages long
>700 page book

It's basically

>1 line of text
>a page of what the author wants you to interpret from it, often contradicting the original text
>a page with what Sri Bravamamamapapapauda would like you to think about it

>>4910741

lel

Also.
>Annotated edition
>Notes on the page take up about 60%+ of the space
>book is more than double the length it rightfully ought to be

>Abridged edition

>>4910753
I have a version of Protestant Ethics in which the footnotes basically take up 90% of the space in the page and go on for several pages, so the footnotes are usually displaced and have to go back and forth trying to find what footnote goes where.

There's a few pages with literally 2 lines of proper text and the rest footnotes in tiny print.

>>4910741

Or
>huge doorstopper like the Bible or War and Peace or Look Homeward, Angel
>Introduction is 10 pages

>>4910727
>Maps
I don't mind those though.

>>4910766
Pic related.

Yes, that is all footnotes.

>>4910766

Same.
I have a kind of old version of Thomas Browne's Religio Medici and other Essays, and the footnotes eat up easily an average of about 3/4 of the page.

>>4910783
so what is basically happening here is that scholars who made dissertations about this stuff can't sell it separately so they pretty much try to shove it down everyone who wants to read the original text's throats.

>>4906314

What? Introductions have existed for centuries, especially in editions of works which required translations from e.g. Latin or Greek.

>>4910800
He means spoilers and he's retarded.

>>4910727
Maps are usually quite useful though.

>>4906314
>the concept of a spoiler is new
Am I being trolled?