I'm a hardcove Scfi/Fantasy guy. However, now and then I venture out from my cave to read real literature. Recently one of the booktubers I watch mentioned that Lonesome Dove is one of the great novels of the 20th century. Amazon confirms 4.8 with almost 20k reviews. So I download the sample.
I like reading preface's, introductions, author's notes, etc. They often provide context for the upcoming novel. However, for some messed up reason, the author completely spoils endings of seemingly important characters at the end of the preface!
For those that have read the book, McMurtry mentions that Newt is never acknowledged by his father and then gets killed by Hell Bitch (what a great name for a stallion!)
Unfortunately, this has put me off the book entirely.
I'm honestly not sure what the point of this post even is. I'm just annoyed and frustrated at the author and felt like venting somewhere.
by erikh42
4 Comments
The second part isn’t even in the book, it’s in a sequel.
Deciding not to read it because of that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
I’ve stopped reading the frontmatter until after I’ve finished the book. This kind of thing has happened to me too many times. I think the only time it helped was when I read The Stand because the updated pop culture references were explained and I had no idea the book had been updated so extensively.
There’s…..a lot more to the book than Newts death. Like, a lot more. Don’t let that sour you on the story, it’s absolutely a must read.
This is… *really common*. Like, any book older than, say, 5 or 10 years that is getting a reprint with a preface almost always includes *some* discussion about plot points or the impact of the book or other things that are spoilers. I don’t think this is remotely unique to *Lonesome Dove*.
I don’t think it’s my place to tell someone what should or shouldn’t put them off of a book, but this is really not a big spoiler. As a general rule, I don’t read prefaces until I’m done with the book for the first time (or if I already know the story and don’t care about spoilers).