Hi, everyone! Just came here with a thought, and I feel like many of you will agree with me. I’m a big reader of classics, and more often than not the editions of classics that I buy have an introduction or foreword to them, and I’m always wondering if reading it will spoil the book’s contents.
I saw down this morning with the Penguin Classics edition of Steinbeck’s Pastures of Heaven and couldn’t decide whether to read the book’s introduction before starting the book, because I really don’t want to ruin the story for myself if I can avoid it.
And I started thinking: how cool would it be if there was a website dedicated to letting readers know whether an introduction or foreword spoils the story or not? I do get that most introductions tend to spoil some elements of the story in one aspect or another—that it can be hard to give critical insight regarding a book without doing so—but there’s other books that have introductions that manage to avoid spoilers. Because I really like getting all of the background knowledge that I can regarding a novel before reading it, I generally will read an introduction before the novel if I don’t think I’ll be too invested in its story. But if I do know I’ll be invested, then I’ll avoid the introduction and come back to it once I’ve read the novel.
TLDR: It would be super cool if a website existed that lets readers know whether a book’s introduction spoils the novel’s story or not.
by JurynJr