Kurt Vonnegut advocated for writers to throw away the first chapter of their book. He liked to drop the reader into the thick of it immediately.
Judge a book by its first pages
11–20 of 45 posts
Re: Judge a book by its first pages
#12I think the reveal button is counted as an upvote for the book because it supposedly discovered my taste and it was based on th books I revealed, but not bookmarked.
Re: Judge a book by its first pages
#13I always follow the rule in the book "How to Read a Book": give the book a superficial reading to decide if it is worth reading deeply and carefully.
Can’t recommend the book enough, taught me a lot of tricks
Re: Judge a book by its first pages
#14Kurt Vonnegut advocated for writers to throw away the first chapter of their book. He liked to drop the reader into the thick of it immediately.
It's first chapters all the way down!
Re: Judge a book by its first pages
#15Kurt Vonnegut advocated for writers to throw away the first chapter of their book. He liked to drop the reader into the thick of it immediately.
Seriously.
Why would "A blue Ford just parked in front of the door. Jim still hasn't truly fully woken up but he was already making breakfast..." incite me to read the book?
Compare that to The Poppy War which I just discovered:
"Take your clothes off. Rin blinked. What? Cheating prevention protocol."
Re: Judge a book by its first pages
#16I don't know, I think some books like for example Frank Herbert's need a couple more pages to set up the scene.
Also, some of the best tv shows I watched need a couple episodes build up to get a nice payout.
Re: Judge a book by its first pages
#17Clicked the link. Selected "Literary". First sample was quite good. Vaguely caught the name of the author. Closed page. Then decided to go back. Could not find the first sample which I decided I might want to read. Got just enough of the author name to get Google to find "Colson Whitehead" when I entered "Colston". The book was "Cool Machine". Went to borrow it from Sno-Isle.org. Placed a hold on the physical book. Number 51 in the hold line (all time record for my holds -- got plenty to read until its likely availability). Glad I found this site, but on my second visit did not find any "Literary" first pages that resonated. Blind luck. Good site idea though. HTH, NSC
Re: Judge a book by its first pages
#18I always follow the rule in the book "How to Read a Book": give the book a superficial reading to decide if it is worth reading deeply and carefully.
Can’t recommend the book enough, taught me a lot of tricks
Yes. It fundamentally changed how I read a book. I go back to it every once a while and always find new things to apply every time.
Re: Judge a book by its first pages
#19This is basically an ad for recent books the maker likes or gets paid to promote and the selection is hot garbage
Re: Judge a book by its first pages
#20I think the reveal button is counted as an upvote for the book because it supposedly discovered my taste and it was based on th books I revealed, but not bookmarked.
If that is true, it's bad design. The site definitely needs a dislike button too, while we're at it...