Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Judge a book by its first pages

uncovered.ink

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 45 posts

Re: Judge a book by its first pages

#31

Post by spankibalt »

stephen_cagle wrote: post #28

Ignoring whether this is a good business, I feel like this is a pretty terrible way to judge a book. If it took off it would result in everyone just starting their book with a real hook, which only works for a small number of genres and only if nothing else needs to be setup before "hooking" (simple "nothing is unfamiliar" stories). I've read plenty of books on recommendation that I think are great, but they were not…

> But, the counterargument to this is if it helps people start books, [...].

It certainly doesn't. Not that it matters to people who love reading books, for they know judging a whole book by its first page(s), or based on some formula extracted from one of those silly self-improvement tomes, is just ridiculous (especially the latter reminiscent of "Pritchard's graph" from Dead Poets Society).

Re: Judge a book by its first pages

#32

Post by happytoexplain »

scotty79 wrote: post #12

I 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.

That makes sense. "I read some and wanted to read more" is a useful metric like an upvote (it doesn't have to mean "I know I like this" to be useful).

Re: Judge a book by its first pages

#34

Post by ofalkaed »

imglorp wrote: post #11

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.

Second chapter becomes the first chapter if you throw away the first chapter, should you also throw that away? I guess Zeno would approve. Vonnegut's advice and most if not all of the common advice given to aspiring writers has truth in it but it tends to be too pithy for its own good. The first chapter needs to lay the groundwork for everything that follows and this applies for everything from genre and essays to the complicated and experimental works of literary fiction. Why should the reader care?

Vonnegut is ultimately pushing back against the old saw of the captivating first sentence, many aspiring writers fall into the trap of trying start their book by trying to captivate the reader at cost of laying that foundation; if I can just word this opening paragraph perfectly, the readers will be hooked. It is a fairly dishonest way to go about things. Everything the reader needs to know about what you are writing needs to be covered in that first chapter or paragraph or chapters or section or whatever metric applies to what you are writing, the trick is that you need to present it in a way that does not spoil everything to come.

If you get fixated on captivating the reader with the opening, tossing the first chapter and reworking the second is decent advice, but it might be better to just rework the first. All of these pithy bits of writing advice have truth in them and have a great deal to teach you but far too many aspiring writers tend to accept them as dogma.

Re: Judge a book by its first pages

#35

Post by [deleted] »

GarnetFloride wrote: post #26
BeetleB wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would not recommend for fiction - at least not mass market fiction. But Mortimer probably felt those were not reading, and the method would work for him :-) When I read How To Read a Book , I was quite impressed. In practice ... it's not very useful for the types of book I read. Likely better for deeper, philosophical books (including fiction of that category). For a lot of fiction books, my rule is to read the first…

I use Mortimer's system for non-fiction works, which is where it makes the most sense. I would also use it if I was doing a really deep dive in a fiction work. For most fiction that I am reading for entertainment, the first 50ish pages will tell me if its worth finishing.

[deleted]

Re: Judge a book by its first pages

#36

Post by jambalaya8 »

BeetleB wrote: post #24
EagleEdge wrote: post #10

I 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.

Would not recommend for fiction - at least not mass market fiction. But Mortimer probably felt those were not reading, and the method would work for him :-) When I read How To Read a Book , I was quite impressed. In practice ... it's not very useful for the types of book I read. Likely better for deeper, philosophical books (including fiction of that category). For a lot of fiction books, my rule is to read the first…

Decent way to do it. I usually try to read the first 2-10 pages of a fiction book (at most) before I decide I might like it. If it hooks me, I open to two other mostly random pages, and ignore the plot parts to see if the writing style still seems good. If so, I buy or borrow it (depending).

Non-fiction is different (aside from reasons already mentioned) in that there is usually a far more limited number of books on a subject anyway. Sometimes (mostly not textbooks), you are stuck with just one or a few. Lots of great little obscure books about quirky bits of history out there that were great twenty pages in, but started out sorta meh.

Read the Adler book in high school; I kinda felt it was overrated at the time. I probably ought to reread it as an adult (not a 15 year old) at some point.

Re: Judge a book by its first pages

#37

Post by shagie »

BeetleB wrote: post #25
sva_ wrote: post #16

I 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.

I don't think the site is claiming otherwise. And as for Frank Herbert's Dune, I gave it a try. I read the first two books, and was 20% of my way through the third when I realized that "No, this whole story is not going to get good ever." Should have just stopped after a few pages of the first book :-)

My most recent read of Dune was after Foundation in order (side bit: bailed at Foundation's Edge because it got too "preachy").

One of the things that I had stumbled across was that Dune was an argument against the utopian view of Asimov and Foundation where individuals don't matter in the Seldon Plan and its played out in a galactic scale. Dune in that read is a dystopian view of the future where everything (at the galactic level) hinges upon individuals and the plot is played out on a planetary scale.

Asimov was asking "can reason organize civilization?" and Herbert came back and asked "what are the dangers if you think it can?"

...

So, when I revisit the large scale science fiction from the era... to me, now, it's more of a philosophy paper with a plot founded in future speculative fiction - more akin to reading Plato than Tolkien. Philosophical arguments rather than myth making and story telling that the authors were dueling in serialized pulp magazines rather than letters and treatises.

Re: Judge a book by its first pages

#38

Post by JuniperMesos »

imglorp wrote: post #11

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.

That's an interesting quote given that in Slaughterhouse-Five, his most famous novel, he conspicuously avoids doing this. The first chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five is a meta-chapter about the writing of the novel itself, and only in chapter two does the story proper actually begin.

I think there's something effective about the way the book begins, and continually references other parts of itself throughout the entirety of the story; but it's definitely not throwing away the first chapter; or alternatively if there was a "first chapter" to Slaughterhouse-Five that Vonnegut threw away, I wonder what possibly could have been there.

Re: Judge a book by its first pages

#39

Post by biotinker »

BeetleB wrote: post #24
EagleEdge wrote: post #10

I 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.

Would not recommend for fiction - at least not mass market fiction. But Mortimer probably felt those were not reading, and the method would work for him :-) When I read How To Read a Book , I was quite impressed. In practice ... it's not very useful for the types of book I read. Likely better for deeper, philosophical books (including fiction of that category). For a lot of fiction books, my rule is to read the first…

> For a lot of fiction books, my rule is to read the first 50 pages. If I'm not engaged, move on. Life is short.

Just encountered myself doing this. I was reading John Birmingham's Axis of Time books. The first three sucked me in and I devoured them in a day or two apiece. Starting the fourth...something was off. The writing felt stilted, like the author was trying to cram in too many pop culture references or something. I put it down and have given it two more tries since with the same result, so now I'm done.

I'm sad, because I was really looking forwards to having several more books in the series.

Re: Judge a book by its first pages

#40

Post by ofalkaed »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #38
imglorp wrote: post #11

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.

That's an interesting quote given that in Slaughterhouse-Five, his most famous novel, he conspicuously avoids doing this. The first chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five is a meta-chapter about the writing of the novel itself, and only in chapter two does the story proper actually begin. I think there's something effective about the way the book begins, and continually references other parts of itself throughout the entiret…

How do you know he did not follow his own advice? Metafiction becomes a cheap trick if you are not upfront about it, you either make it clear from the start or end up in "it was all a dream" territory.
Post reply on HN