Some really good books can be quite a struggle to read until you get past the first 100 pages. I even found Anathem by Neal Stephenson to be a struggle until I got past 200 pages, but after that it was so worth it.
Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
101–110 of 126 posts
Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
#102It's interesting to think what might happen if something like this became really popular. I'd imagine many novels might start adding super oddball stuff in the first page, just to stand out from the crowd and pique peoples' curiosity. Kind of the literary equivalent to clickbait headlines.
“From a little after two o'clock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that—a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them.”
— Absalom, Absalom by Faulkner
Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this might already happen. This is just anecdata but I often get turned off from books by overwrought first page(s). Eventually someone convines me to go back and the rest of the novel is good. I'd love to hear an author's perspective on this, if any of them notice it. My guess is that they stew on opening passages for years before writing, causing them to get a little neurotic about them, then eventually the…
In pretty much any writing medium (novels, screenplays, short stories, etc), standard advice involves hooking the reader within the first paragraph or so. This is partly why "in medias res" tends to be such a popular opening technique - it drops the reader straight into the action, which is theoretically more interesting than "She woke up, got dressed, and went downstairs for her daily breakfast of toast and juice...…
“Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up I noticed I was late
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke
Somebody spoke and I went into a dream”
Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
An interesting example, one of the best-known book openings in French literature ("Aujourd'hui, maman est morte."), and the difficulties translating the sentence in English: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lost-in-translat...
Interesting article, and I believe I have a better translation: "Today, my mom died." It sounds better than just "mom" and seems to express the right level of closeness. OTOH I think it's often appropriate to keep "mamma" in Italian movies and texts because it carries a huge amount of connotations, which "maman" doesn't.
"Mom" is US English only I think.
Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
#105It's interesting to think what might happen if something like this became really popular. I'd imagine many novels might start adding super oddball stuff in the first page, just to stand out from the crowd and pique peoples' curiosity. Kind of the literary equivalent to clickbait headlines.
My friend in college would read a random page from the first third of the book to make his decision. He found the first page to be too unreliable. My roommate would read the last page of the book to find out if the book was worth his time. We thought he was nuts. Especially since he could read a novel in 3 hours anyway.
My way is to skim the book backwards. Keeps you from getting hooked by the narrative. You can decide in a few seconds whether it’s worth reading.
Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
#106Great idea. No HTTPS?
ngate's Discourse on HTTPS. I don't know how accurate it is, but it's a good read!
Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this might already happen. This is just anecdata but I often get turned off from books by overwrought first page(s). Eventually someone convines me to go back and the rest of the novel is good. I'd love to hear an author's perspective on this, if any of them notice it. My guess is that they stew on opening passages for years before writing, causing them to get a little neurotic about them, then eventually the…
Writer's perspective - starting and ending a book are the top 2 hardest things, in my opinion, especially because editors get all up your ass about beginnings. I suspect this has to do with primacy principle, i.e.the editor is "most aware" during the beginning of the reading, and also aware that readers do the same thing. They will pick up the book in the bookstore and possibly skim the beginning to see if they shoul…
Stover's Caine's Law starts with an author's note: "Several parts of this story take place before the events depicted in Act of Atonement Book 1: Caine Black Knife. Other parts of this story take place after. Still other parts take place before and after both. Some parts may be imaginary, and some were real only temporarily, as they have subsequently unhappened."
That must have been driven by comments from initial readers, I suspect. Basically, some of the characters are rewriting the overall story of the series.
Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
The smart ones do. The same goes for emails, advertising copy, blogs, abstracts, elevator pitches, etc. Movies do it, too.
Why though? Is there something relating overall quality to first line engagement? "The primroses were over" does nothing for me, but Watership Down is great!
Because people are deluged with information and need a good reason to invest the time looking past the beginning.
Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
#109It's interesting to think what might happen if something like this became really popular. I'd imagine many novels might start adding super oddball stuff in the first page, just to stand out from the crowd and pique peoples' curiosity. Kind of the literary equivalent to clickbait headlines.
Reminds me of this: http://bulwer-lytton.com/ "The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels."
And, in a similar but shorter-winded vein, the Lyttle Lytton: http://adamcadre.ac/lyttle.html
Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting article, and I believe I have a better translation: "Today, my mom died." It sounds better than just "mom" and seems to express the right level of closeness. OTOH I think it's often appropriate to keep "mamma" in Italian movies and texts because it carries a huge amount of connotations, which "maman" doesn't.
But then you have to translate for the majority of English-speaking countries that don't use 'mom'...
"Mum"'s the word.