I'm immensely annoyed every time I read—or worse, listen—through a book and it's peppered with critical notes instead of simply contextual ones (which explain o

I'm immensely annoyed every time I read—or worse, listen—through a book and it's peppered with critical notes instead of simply contextual ones (which explain obscure things that the author's contemporaries wouldn't need explained). “For Hesse this and that is a symbol of death...”—bah! Maybe I want to read through the book first and then think about foreshadowing or symbolism, how about that. The worst is when these notes give out the story that is yet to come, sometimes even the ending straight away. I do wish bad luck to certain producers of audiobooks.