/lit/ - Literature

>>5100421
>authors name is bigger than the books title
>description on the back spoilers important plot points in the book
>introduction/preface is more lengthy than the actual content
>abridged novels

>no keyboard search function

>>5100421
>no backlit screen

>>5100468
or "define this word" function

>>5100468
If physical books had control+f functionality, I'd never be tempted to get an e-reader.

I have a Crime and Punishment edition that's like 200 pages long. The page margins are like 10px per side and the text is like 8 or 9 points. It'd ridiculous.

On the flipside, I've seen books with wide margins and 13 or 14 size fonts so they can stretch a short text into roughly 100 pages and sell it for full price.

>>5100421
I rechristen these nitpicking hate threads "Autism Speaks"

>>5100421
>for my dog/children/wife
>for everyone who made this book possible
>17 pages of quotes from book reviews of other books

>>5100509
I have a copy of the Lord of the Rings that contains all six books with appendices, notes and everything.

Tiny, tiny print in a strange as fuck font, and the pages are thinner than a Bible's.

>Crease on the cover

>Doesn't automagically save the page I was last on

>>5100593
>Reading a book in public.
>People taking it as an invitation to talk to you.

>>5100509
you mean bukowski novels, right?

>>5100441
What the fuck is the point of an abridged novel? Seriously, who was the first fucker who had the gall to read a book and say "know what, I know better than the author what belongs and doesn't." That shit really grinds my gears.

>>5100610
>implying Les Miserables shouldn't be abridged
you can't tell me that sewer section was worth reading and anything but ridiculously self-indulgent

>>5100610
There are people out there that do know better, they're called editors and publishers.

>>5100619
You know very well abridging is done after the original has already been published. Abridging before publication is called "editing".

>Book has a genealogy in the front
>reveals which characters will get married throughout the course of the book

>Anschluß is misprinted as Anschlufi

>>5100610

Reading became a prestigious past time among 19th Century housewifes, but that didn't mean they actually liked reading. The eastern texts suffered the worst from this -- everyone wanted to claim they have read the Ramayana, but no one actually wanted to work through all 24,000 verses. Which is why you got abridgements which are like 1/10th the length.

As per topic, I can't stand it when a book does not clearly state whether it's an abridgement, translation, which version it is, and such details either directly on the cover or somewhere on the publication details page. I don't want to have to read the 50 page introduction just to extract this information.

>shitty map in the front made by someone with no knowledge of geography or cartography

>introduction

>>5100605
>being this orgone-deprived

>>5100732

fuck eastern texts though

Am I the only one who actually likes introductions and prefaces?

>book is divided into chapters
>no index at all
or worse
>book is divided into chapters
>index looks like this:
>-Foreword
>-Author's biography
>-Bibliography
>-Book Title (actual book starts here)
>-End notes

>>5100610
>What the fuck is the point of an abridged novel?

One "point" to them is to create versions suitable for less advanced readers - this often means (1) native speakers of younger ages and at lower reading levels, and (2) second language learners. The abridgement will tend to consist of such things as shortening the text, and removing advanced vocabulary and idioms that are likely to impede such readers. This practice has been absolutely standard in the teaching of languages for centuries.

>>5103870

That's a contents page; not an index.

>>5103865
m8 only plebs read introductions

>>5103881
whatever it is, it's bad

>>5103887

No arguing with that,

>>5100421
>Authors name and the fucking title of the book on every page. Just in case you forget.

>>5103870

There's something worse: an edition or translation of a multi-book epic poem that has book numbers only at the start of each book. Like Richmond Lattimore's Odyssey in various HarperCollins printings (which also have "page" in full before the number top and centre). Clearly designed by people who'd never actually used such a book.

>>5103882
Plebes ignore title pages

>>5103882
i used to read introductions until yesterday when i read one where the dude compared the two main characters in the novel to a "unstoppable force and a immovable object" i was like this guy was selected to write the intro to a novel by a nobel prize winner and he describes it using a cliche from batman? wow, who hires these people!

>>5100715
>mfw große was printed as "grobe" in The Naked and the Dead

>A new American translation.

>>5103870
Why would you place such value in an index? Reading it beforehand could potentially spoil the story's events.

>>5104021
i don't read it beforehand
it's a quick way to see how long the current chapter is, for starters. it also makes it easier to find something you're looking for if you don't know exactly where it is.

>>5100421
Endnotes rather than footnotes or worst of all just a list of sources used for each chapter.

>>5104053
>endnotes
Fuck them.

>>5100421
I really hate that I can conveniently flip through pages without having to wait eight years for each to load.

E-readers let you really enjoy the pace of picking through the book for stuff when you can take a sip of coffee in between each page flip.

>acquire reprint of classic book
>first 130 pages is the author's bio, an essay on the sociohistorical context when the book was written, and at least two essays on the actual book, one of which contains heavy spoilers

>>5100441
>introduction/preface is more lengthy than the actual content
Only time I didn't mind that was in the copy of Art of War I read. He gave you this big contextual overview of Chinese military history and the history of the text.

>>5104697
>>5104666
That's fun

>>5100421
I held the same sentiment until I started reading Scullard's A History of the Roman World just now, and discovered endnotes that ran for multiple pages.

I'm normally pretty chill with however a book wants to set itself out, but the British covers of McCarthy's books are seriously awful. Pic is probably the worst example of it.

Also the spoilers on the back of the Penguin version of The Idiot. Cheers dickheads.

>>5104729
>Also the spoilers on the back of the Penguin version of The Idiot. Cheers dickheads.
lol

Thanks for the warning.

>>5100546
>fictional introduction
>series of poems written by the author praising his own novel