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/lit/ - Literature

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21526978 No.21526978 [Reply] [Original]

>30 pages long preface summarizing the main ideas of the book
I do think they help in a better understanding of the book but kinda feels like they spoil the content since you're not understanding these concepts and reaching conclusions by yourself and allow other people to think for you. Also they make the book longer than it actually is. Does the average /lit/izen read these prefaces or just skip them? Should I even bother?

>> No.21526990

nonfiction or fiction

>> No.21526991

>>21526990
nonfiction

>> No.21526992

>>21526978
Read them at the end, I never understood why anyone would like to have the magic of the first reading taken away from them right from the get go.

>> No.21527002

>>21526991
So you're not a dumbass.

Yeah I don't necessarily hate the preface but what about your complaint that they 'spoil' the literature. Usually good non-fiction literature has a build up of information, knowledge, and an array of different thoughts, propositions, and ideas they are trying to prove.

In the end, all good non-fiction is really just kind of like Euclid's Elements.

>> No.21527009

>>21527002
>>21526991
>>21526990
For instance, it wouldn't spoil me if the introduction to my copy of J.S. Mill's A System of Logic said that the author would use the Petito Principii to disprove Hobbes theory of predication in language, because I didn't know the context. I didn't know the categorical system of ideas and words that would enable him to bring it up.