>buy a copy of The Tale of Genji
>get cozy
>usually skip the introduction and preface but decide to read it since it's an old book and the context might be important
WHY does the FIRST PAGE OF THE INTRODUCTION spoil the deaths of two main characters and say exactly in the book when they die? Words can't properly assess how annoyed I am by this. Have to find something similar to read now. Literally the first fricking page. What were they thinking???
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Every introduction to Genji spoils it. It's really not a book that you should go into blind. It's still worth reading.
ya i usually read the introductions but i skipped the introduction to stoner cuz i could tell he was just going to summarize the whole plot for lazy college kids who don't want to do the reading
You MUST have to know the names, powers & abilities, birthdates, astrological charts, and favourite colours of each character in every novel you read before reading or you will be clueless. Reading a novel should be an exercise in typology, not a shell game.
what? it's more about author and climate in that time period...the cultural movements, social struggles, politics all are important
He was being sarcastic bro
>reading the introduction
I shiggy diggy, unironically
yeah they did this with The Trial too, I guess since they're classics idk
I think maybe us being born in the modern generation don't see the benefit or Introductions and prefaces.
I for one think they're all garbage because they usually pollute my perspective of the reading before reading it and I have to spend more time separating my actual perspective from the so called 'Professional' just getting to stamp their name on another's work (With the exception of translators notes, which are sometimes interesting).
Before the internet I think it was a lot harder for book bros to share ideas about their favorite books, so buying one that includes somebody else perspective is interesting if you crave that dialog but aren't in a community to talk about it.
If I see Neil Gayman's signature on anything I get rid of the book, frick that guy and his introductions.
My Moby Dick penguin's introduction spoiled some of the most kino parts of the first 200 or so pages of the book by telling me "yeah this part is kino"
At least it didn't spoiler The First Lowering
God what a good fricking chapter that was
Babies first penguin
What kind of moron actually reads the introduction? Are you new to reading?
This. What's the point of these moronic intros anyways? Just read the preface by the authors chad friend and go on your way.
PC
I miss trying my best not to accidentally look at any introduction page I leaf through. Still gud whenever I'm fed up with any book.
>he read the introduction
>his first impression of the book has already been tainted by some pseud who had no input from the author
It's over, you're only supposed to read author prefaces
I didn't know I wasn't supposed to read introductions...
You can, it will most likely talk about what happens in the book and the context of when and where it was created and the life if the author. I don't get why some people care that much about having a "pure" first reading, if anything knowing what happens and the context lets me understand the book in the first reading better. I've heard it being talked about as turning uour first reading into a second reading
it depends on whether you enjoy immersing yourself in a book and experiencing the twists and turns of a story fresh, so you get that fun feeling of the ground falling from under your feet as you learn that what you assumed was the case was not in fact the case. for a lot of people this is a very enjoyable sensation and they like to preserve it by not learning the plot beforehand. and authors in turn like to play such games with their readers by doing surprising things that would delight someone who was reading it unspoiled by thwarting their expectations
it's always weird to me that people on this board seem to be unaware of this because it's really quite a big bit of storytelling. of course it isn't the be all and end all and if literature has worth, then it will still be interesting and worthwhile after the fact, and you can dig into why they did that and why it worked. but it's puzzling to me that people would purposely try and miss out on that enjoyable thing
The thing is with classics you most likely know what happens in a lot of them, like you can't spoil the Odyssey for example, and in many other classic plays you get told what happens in thr play at the start, so we grow used to this type of reading
i think what i hate even more is introductions that offer interpretations of the book or parts of it
i dont want to look at something im reading through the lense of someone else the entire time, i want to make my own conclusions first, then hear what other people think about them
anyway i learned my lesson and im readin introductions last now
>spoiled the oldest novel in the world
>everyone is born with complete knowledge of the book
>no one will ever read it for the first time
fricking moron
yeah
seriously OP, why haven't you already read this a thousand years ago?
Hadn't been written yet. Like asking why I haven't read Winds of Winter yet, we're still centuries from release.
Bibles do this a lot, like when I was young and wanted to read some of the books and the stupid ass white people version of the bible I had spoiled the entire plot of every book. Wait, HE RISES FROM THE DEAD?!
just call penguin books and tell them to write or find or pull out of their ass a whole new japanese epic
>caring about the plot
>not being able to appreciate plot and thinking you're superior for ignoring a significant aspect of most novels ever written
Spoilers are LE HECKING BAD the only value in literature is HOW IT MAKES ME FEEL
why not read the intro after reading the book? it gives you another interpretation and doesnt spoil anything. ideally intros would just be about the culture and surrounding events at the time without mentioning any themes or plot points ut we have to make do with what we have.
Aren't intros just obsolete in the modern era? I can pursue a multitude of other perspectives online, there being no need to waste that extra paper.
Have you never taken a course on literature? Every single one of them spoils it for you, but it does not matter, it will always hit when you read through it.
>muh plothomosexualry
I want women and children OFF this board.
Spoilers do not matter for great works. If a spoiler ruins a book, that book isn't worth it. If you don't like spoilers either way you're the problem and would be better off watching the new capeshit as soon as it premieres.
>spoilers
midwit concept, books are meant to be enjoyed even if you know the plot, they're not supposed to reveal some hidden plot twists like a shitty Netflix film
That homosexual burroughs did this in his intro to You Can’t Win
Also everyone saying spoilers dont matter are homosexuals. If you already know the ending sure it doesnt matter but why go out of your way to know it if you dont already?
But the fact that some character died or did something "crucial" doesn't really matter in itself. The most important thing is what circumstances led up to it and how the author describes it, for example the death of Patroclus, you could just read from some introduction that his corpse was being dragged around tied to a chariot but that information alone doesn't change much, because the way it was written and complex relationships between the characters cannot be included in just the introduction, so you have to read the whole book to really understand it.
It's like saying that because the Bible ends with an apocalypse prophecy, all previous books don't matter, because you've already been spoiled the ending. Introductions are too short to really "spoil" anything, the book has 500 pages for a reason, because it is much more complex than just one final sentence that a character died.
While I can agree with you, the plot is also a crucial element of the story, true I can look past it to enjoy those other elements such as composition, prose, etc, but that doesn't mean the plot is irrelevant.
If the plot didn't mean shit then there would be no trajectory in reading the book, sometimes not knowing the destination can enhance the journey.
I feel like a lot of people in this thread don't actually read and enjoy many books outside of the context of studying them for school
i read books for myself in the same way i read books for school, is that weird? i take notes and summarize it and write down my thoughts on a notebook. it is overkill but i feel like i get the most out of it like that