What do you do when you buy a new book?

[Ms Ordinary]

Imagine you've never read 1984. You open it and you have this fabulously arresting sentence 'It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were just striking thirteen'. Then you look at the end and it says ' He loved Big Brother'.

Knowing that, how the fuck can you enjoy the book?

Reading the end is wrong

However, looking at the sources cited is permissable in a non-fiction book. If they are all Prison Planet or the Daily Mail you've saved yourself a few bob.

Nope, that wouldn't spoil that book for me at all . I'd really want to read the book to find out what was in between.

I read the Dictionary of the Khazars at an impressionable age .

Once I've started a book, I read it in the right order though, unless its a re-read (not very often these days) - never had a peek at the last page spoil a book for me yet. Even a whodunnit doesn't usually have 'whodunnit' on the last page.

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

I read spoilers for films before seeing them too.

 

[Badger Kitten]

I read spoilers for films before seeing them too.

This is like writing a Dear John letter once you get home after the first kiss

 

[Mrs Magpie]

I'm not very methodical about book buying. My favourite method of book buying is just to browse in a bookshop, and I like second-hand bookshops best. I have too many books but I can't bear to give them away unless they're novels. I do have a non-fiction:fiction ratio of about 15:1
I do not count poetry as fiction. It's poetry and in a class of its own.
I do sometimes buy books online but it's much more of a faff really because of the Sorting Office element of the operation.

 

[WouldBe]

Why the FUCK would anyone want to read the last bloody page!??!??
Weirdos.

To find out how the story ends.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Fucking linear-normative nazis

 

[Mrs Magpie]

I don't get reading the last page of a novel. It's like finding out where your parents have hidden the Christmas presents and opening them all on December the 18th. Ultimately an unsatisfying, empty and childish pleasure.

 

[Badger Kitten]

I don't get reading the last page of a novel. It's like finding out where your parents have hidden the Christmas presents and opening them all on December the 18th. Ultimately an unsatisfying, empty and childish pleasure.

Word

 

[Badger Kitten]

I really hate it when people say word. I don't know why I said that.

 

[WouldBe]

I don't get reading the last page of a novel.

because there's no point in reading the previous 199 out of 200 pages.



Most of the books I buy the last page is part of the index or an appendix.

 

[butchersapron]

I don't get reading the last page of a novel. It's like finding out where your parents have hidden the Christmas presents and opening them all on December the 18th. Ultimately an unsatisfying, empty and childish pleasure.

Nonsense - all you'll be reading is nonsense. You won't know the plot, the characters nothing. All you'll see is words

Plus, not all novels have a tightlly woven narrative that ends on the last page.

 

[zoooo]

Nonsense - all you'll be reading is nonsense. You won't know the plot, the characters nothing. All you'll see is words.

Yes, but most peoples' brains REMEMBER these words, and therefore will know in advance how some things are going to end.

Sure, in some books the last page won't hold all the secrets, but is it really worth the risk that this book might do?
I don't think so!

 

[zoooo]

Harry in When Harry Met Sally said he reads the last page first because he might die while reading the book and it would suck not to know how it ended. Now THAT is a decent reason. But any other reason is childish and, and.... just pointless!

'Cos I say so.
And that.

 

[Badger Kitten]

quite

 

[Lea]

I very rarely buy books from shops these days. I order them online and usually read the reviews written by other readers first to see if it's any good.

 

[sojourner]

I get most of mine from second hand shops, so will usually buy several at a time, and then put them on the bookshelf, ready for when I feel like reading those particular books

 

[not-bono-ever]

write my name inside the front cover

A habit I used when I used to shoplift course books all those years ago. got pulled a couple of times in hundreds of thieving expedtions, but just showed them my name inside the cover and kicked off with mock offence. always worked

 

[Vintage Paw]

write my name inside the front cover

A habit I used when I used to shoplift course books all those years ago. got pulled a couple of times in hundreds of thieving expedtions, but just showed them my name inside the cover and kicked off with mock offence. always worked

tbf, it's really fucking easy to lift books. Not that I'm saying you had no skill, just an observation from working in a branch of the big W for 8 years.

 

[DotCommunist]

write my name inside the front cover

A habit I used when I used to shoplift course books all those years ago. got pulled a couple of times in hundreds of thieving expedtions, but just showed them my name inside the cover and kicked off with mock offence. always worked

see I don't bother writing my name in the front, it never works. The book either gets returned or it doesn't.

 

[Stoat Boy]

I am a sucker for a good 'blurb' on the back.

And anything that mentions the word 'Zombies', 'Post-apocolyptic', 'Pandemic' and stuff about MI5/MI6 and I am in like Flyn.

My dream is to write a novel that combines all of these with perhaps the hero being a dour Scandinavian detective with a severe Coffee habit and an inclination for navel gazing in-between being involved with a convoluted plot about Zombies, the end of the world as we know it, infectious diseases and James Bond.

 

[WouldBe]

And anything that mentions the word 'Zombies', 'Post-apocolyptic', 'Pandemic' and stuff about MI5/MI6 and I am in like Flyn.

A bond version of '28 days later'.

 

[5t3IIa]

I've ticked all the options for when I am monied and wander about bookshops willy-nilly with armfulls of first-para read tomes, set on making a To Read pile at home and also have the sort of cummute reading that cause me to miss my stop. And the times I do the same in charity shops but with a bit less discernment.

I have also ticked all the options for now - when I don't have any money at all and get the same Alien graphic novel out of the library three times and still never finish it*




* it was like it was bound randomly it didn't make any sense

 

[Clair De Lune]

Where is the option for sniff it? Mmm new book smell

 

[Stoat Boy]

A bond version of '28 days later'.

I do have some notes about a novel which involves a classic Zombie (rather than the Ragers of 28DL fame) outbreak in America but which is isolated to that continent and a British intelligence officer who is sent into the country to recover some rather damaging files which showed that MI6 knew all about but said bugger all because they wanted to destablise one of the nations in the South and never realised it would all get so out of hand.

But it lacks a certain something and I am buggered if I can work out how to slip my dour Swede into things.