2 ms·

Authors pay a lot of attention to the first few pages of their books, and try to expose the best aspects of their writing style there in order to hook you in. I

by uoaei 4y ago

Authors pay a lot of attention to the first few pages of their books, and try to expose the best aspects of their writing style there in order to hook you in. I try to remain conscious of this as I read in order to better anticipate the style and content curation that follows. > I don't regret the time spent finishing them I think this is a different take than many others would have on the topic of reading. I know I regret spending time reading things that do not "spark joy", to put it pithily.

sfink 4y ago
For fiction, I flip a book open to about 1/3 of the way through and read a paragraph or two, which generally tells me everything I need to know. That avoids the unrepresentative intro portion—I appreciate a punchy and/or gripping opening scene, but it's not very well correlated to how much I'll enjoy the rest of the text. It's weird, there aren't that many ways of choosing a set of words to convey something, and yet an author's voice and style comes through roughly the same no matter where I sample from (except for the overworked parts, which usually includes the beginning.) And it usually comes through strong, which is great: sometimes I think my reading diet is mostly about sampling a variety of good-tasting styles of mental processing. (Sadly, that does mean that co-written books hardly ever work for me. The voice is muddled. It's rare that authors are able to meld their work truly synergistically.)
- nobody9999 4y ago
  >Sadly, that does mean that co-written books hardly ever work for me. The voice is muddled. It's rare that authors are able to meld their work truly synergistically. I thought the authors of the Expanse[0] series did a pretty good job with that. AFAICT (but I have no way to confirm this), they split the storytelling so that each plot arc is consistent and speaks with a single voice. I can certainly see how multiple authors could muddle the "voice", but I think the quality (or otherwise) is more a function of storyboarding/universe creation and how well that's done collectively by the authors. Please note I'm not really disagreeing with you and, as a rule, your observation jibes with mine. Although (as I mentioned) there are some exceptions. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(novel_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(novel_series)
stcroixx 4y ago
There's a wide range of emotions and impact I expect from good writing - joy is nice, but hardly required for me. A couple of my favorites I've read several times like East of Eden or Brothers Karamazov end up being more like fundamental changes to who I am rather just experiences of emotion, neither being very joyous.

by uoaei 4y ago

sfink 4y ago

For fiction, I flip a book open to about 1/3 of the way through and read a paragraph or two, which generally tells me everything I need to know. That avoids the unrepresentative intro portion—I appreciate a punchy and/or gripping opening scene, but it's not very well correlated to how much I'll enjoy the rest of the text. It's weird, there aren't that many ways of choosing a set of words to convey something, and yet an author's voice and style comes through roughly the same no matter where I sample from (except for the overworked parts, which usually includes the beginning.) And it usually comes through strong, which is great: sometimes I think my reading diet is mostly about sampling a variety of good-tasting styles of mental processing. (Sadly, that does mean that co-written books hardly ever work for me. The voice is muddled. It's rare that authors are able to meld their work truly synergistically.)

nobody9999 4y ago
>Sadly, that does mean that co-written books hardly ever work for me. The voice is muddled. It's rare that authors are able to meld their work truly synergistically. I thought the authors of the Expanse[0] series did a pretty good job with that. AFAICT (but I have no way to confirm this), they split the storytelling so that each plot arc is consistent and speaks with a single voice. I can certainly see how multiple authors could muddle the "voice", but I think the quality (or otherwise) is more a function of storyboarding/universe creation and how well that's done collectively by the authors. Please note I'm not really disagreeing with you and, as a rule, your observation jibes with mine. Although (as I mentioned) there are some exceptions. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(novel_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(novel_series)

stcroixx 4y ago

There's a wide range of emotions and impact I expect from good writing - joy is nice, but hardly required for me. A couple of my favorites I've read several times like East of Eden or Brothers Karamazov end up being more like fundamental changes to who I am rather just experiences of emotion, neither being very joyous.