Does anyone else almost always skip the introduction of books when they are written by a different person? I just don't care, I want to get to what I actually bought, not some 30 page rambling by someone I don't know that only vaguely relates to what I'm about to read.
I go on /lit/ and do that all the time though.
I was close to skipping the foreword in steppenwolf
Invariably depends on who's writing it.
>>7740174
son!
>>7740169
it depends. if it's something i want to dive into with a clear mind, i skip it. if i'm reading the critique of pure reason or being and time, i would put time into reading the introduction.
back in my young'n days i read the intro to b&n edition of war and peace then basically parroted it for my essay portion of the ap lit test and got a 5
sometimes I read it after, if I really liked the book. they're like special features on a D V D
>>7740169
Read the intros only for non-fiction. Avoid them for fiction. It is that simple, at least for me.
>>7740174
My man
>read intro to brothers k
>whole thing spoiled
>>7740498
Fucking this, so many intros have straight up spoilers to the whole book. Sometimes I look at them after I finish
And on that note, why in the name of fuck would the paragraph on the back of the book ever contain major spoilers
I read invitation to a beheading recently, and the back of the book l i t e r a l l y spoils the whole ending quite explicitly. Why would that ever be okay,?
>>7740169
I tried to do this for The Republic by Plato a few years ago wherein the author had a 500 page introduction, and boy do I fucking regret it. I later read the 'introduction' which was a contextual analysis, and had I read that before reading Plato's subject matter, I would have done everything more efficiently. The same applies to all philosophy books and most books
