Very cool! I find myself skipping the vast majority of books on kindle because the blurbs make them sound awful to me, but I admit I'd probably also have skipped a lot of books I really liked had I judged them that way. Also this seems like a good way to find books I wouldn't normally consider sampling just because of laziness and prejudice on my part.
Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
41–50 of 126 posts
Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Something similar has happened in pop music - because on Spotify (and probably other streaming services, too) a play counts if you listen to at least 30 seconds, there's been a definite shift towards songs that start off with a pared down version of the main hook, or at least start their build much more obviously early on. There's fewer long, drawn out intros (which are normally saved just for videos now).
In fairness, wasn't this also true for radio? I recall quite a number of songs where the full version (from a CD or similar) had an intro that I'd never hear on the radio.
"She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah..."
Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
#43"Call me Ishmael."
Ok, I'm hooked!
Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
#44"It was a dark and stormy night. A door slammed. A woman screamed. A shot rang out.
Meanwhile, back on the ranch..."
Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
#45How did you do this site ? Did you download a big torrent of ebooks and extracted the first chapter/words of them ?
Interesting though ;-)
Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
#46I kept hearing raving reviews of "The Name of the Wind". I started reading it and got a couple of chapters in and had no interest in continuing. I mentioned this to my brother and he told me that I had to keep going. So I figured I'd read a bit more and see if there was anything to the book. I just finished it on Saturday and I have to say it is easily one of the best books I have ever read. But, if I had just read the first pages of the book I never would have been hooked.
Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
#47I kept hearing raving reviews of "The Name of the Wind". I started reading it and got a couple of chapters in and had no interest in continuing. I mentioned this to my brother and he told me that I had to keep going. So I figured I'd read a bit more and see if there was anything to the book. I just finished it on Saturday and I have to say it is easily one of the best books I have ever read. But, if I had just read t…
I felt pretty much the same way when reading it. "The Name of the Wind" is rather unusual as a novel because those first chapters are pretty fundamentally different than the rest of the novel. Not just in terms of plot, but I think also the general tone and style. I don't actually have a count, but I think it's a good 50-100 pages before the novel falls into its rhythm. It's not that the beginning is bad (in my opinion, obviously) it's just that there's a lot to set up and he does so without using a bunch of exposition.
Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Something similar has happened in pop music - because on Spotify (and probably other streaming services, too) a play counts if you listen to at least 30 seconds, there's been a definite shift towards songs that start off with a pared down version of the main hook, or at least start their build much more obviously early on. There's fewer long, drawn out intros (which are normally saved just for videos now).
In fairness, wasn't this also true for radio? I recall quite a number of songs where the full version (from a CD or similar) had an intro that I'd never hear on the radio.
The radio edit. It's not just for bleeping out swear words.
Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
#49It'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.
Looks like it's already happening. I see that some books are "promoted".
Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked
#50Like all other shortcuts for judging a book this one has plenty of issues. However I like that it disentangles a few of those issues. Instead of judging a book by the author, cover, title and then the first page you can focus in on just one of those heuristics.
Also if you can control yourself and avoid revealing the author/title of books you don't like you won't bias yourself when you get recommendations from friends!