What Spoils Reading A Book Before You've Begun? (2/6/22)

[Marc]

We talk about "spoilers" which usually refer to revealing too much about a book or revealing something essential to a particular plot that would lessen the experience/surprise were a reader to know it beforehand. Are spoilers a thing for you? Are there different types of spoilers (a type of review, too much background about the author, political/social media melodrama surrounding a book, etc.)? Is there anything that can "spoil" a book for you before you've begun?

[Xan]

Tell me whodunit or reveal a major plot twist, and I will call it a spoiler, and that's about it. So much of the story is in the storytelling itself and in the details and in the breadth and depth of the characters, that revealing things in the story doesn't bother me.

[Stacia]

I really don't like to know much about a book prior to reading it. I often don't read reviews (or forewords) until after I've finished a book.

Generally, the most I want to know about a book ahead of time would be the equivalent of a "one sentence movie pitch" for it, basically something extremely high-level/big picture & vague.

However, there are times I start reading a book & start having trouble with it (usually because I find the content disturbing). In those cases, I may stop reading, go research more (reading multiple in-depth reviews including ones with spoilers) before deciding whether or not to continue. I can think of two times last year I did this: with At Night All Blood is Black (which I decided to continue reading) & with The Only Good Indians (which I decided to abandon).

So, to answer the questions...
Are spoilers a thing for you? Yes

Are there different types of spoilers (a type of review, too much background about the author, political/social media melodrama surrounding a book, etc.)? Yes, especially reviews which give plot overviews, character analysis, etc. I am ok with knowing things like "it plays with traditional writing forms" or "it's based on xyz mythology". I've never really thought of political/social media melodrama being a spoiler, though I guess that it is now that you mention it.

Is there anything that can "spoil" a book for you before you've begun? Not that it would entirely spoil a good book, but knowing too much ahead of time (plot, etc.) makes the book more boring for me. I like the excitement of not knowing, waiting to see what happens between the author's words & me without "outside" interference of opinions, summaries, etc.

[Cheryl]

For me, I think it depends on the type of story. Thrillers and mysteries are easier to spoil the fun than some less plot heavy books. I generally like to have a sense of the set up and large themes of a book before I go in. I don't like to know too many details and mostly try to avoid them. But I do read some reviews when I am deciding how interested I am in picking up a book or adding it to my priority short list TBR. I like to know if a book is a character study and perhaps just a meandering nothing of a plot. I like to know if a book is very bleak and depressing, so I can be in the right mental space when I approach it. I want to avoid trauma porn (I know that that is a very subjective thing, and people will have different ideas of what that is.)

[Nadine in California]

I hope I write the kind of review that I want to read - one that doesn't talk about the plot or characters in any specific way, but gives an idea of why the reviewer liked the book or didn't. A review that gives their opinion of strengths and weaknesses in general, not in detail. If the writing is good, examples are nice. I have a low bar for using spoiler tags, just in case.

[Whitney]

I'm with Stacia in that things like character analysis and media hype are spoilers for me. I want to form my own opinions about a novel, not be primed to home-in on how a book deals with a particular issue, or how a character is one-dimensional.

With some notable exceptions, things traditionally considered spoilers like "whodunnit" usually don't bother me that much. In some cases, I may actually look up a summary, so that rather than reading for plot I can slow down and appreciate the ideas and the writing.

[Cheryl]

I am having a different experience right now. I am in the middle of reading House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski. I believe for books like this that depend upon very unusual storytelling structure or formatting or whatever, it is helpful for the reader to get a leg up and have some idea of what the challenges are so that they can get oriented to the story and settle into that specific reading experience. I got some ideas from posts/videos from a few online readers about reading strategies to get through that maze. Knowing the set up (experimental text layout, double narrators, theme of unreliability of truth/fiction, footnotes within footnotes) put me on firm footing to get started.

This has been a very interactive reading experience for me, using Google searches and keeping my own notebook to map what I learn and how I understand the story. In that enthusiasm, I accidentally spoiled myself for an answer to an important question that had a lot of meaning for a character and their mental state and relationships. At first I was mildly disappointed. But later I actually appreciated knowing it because of the emotional difficulty of it. I am glad I could prepare myself. Now, not every reader needs or wants that. But for some things I do want it.

[Robert]

For me even the blurb can put me off a book - the most famous probably being the Tramp Press version of Solar Bones - although I read an enjoyed it and saw the deeper meaning, I still would have preferred it if that spoiler wasn't included. However, there has been many times I ruined my reading experience by reading a blurb first.

Also I cannot watch a film then read the adaptation - it has to be the other way - hence why I am refusing to watch Power of the Dog or Lost Daughter as I have to read the book first.

[Whitney]

Robert wrote: "For me even the blurb can put me off a book - the most famous probably being the Tramp Press version of Solar Bones - although I read an enjoyed it and saw the deeper meaning, I still would have pr..."

I'm the opposite of you in that I'm a movie first person. But, you can't go wrong with Power of the Dog. It's the book I've long had at the top of my "great books that deserve to be better known" list.

[Hugh]

Like Robert, I am reluctant to watch films and TV adaptations of books that I am likely to want to read, just because once you have seen pictures, it can be very difficult to get them out of ones head and assess the book on its own merits. I do make exceptions from time to time, because nobody can predict what they may want to read 30+ years later, and there are sometimes social reasons for watching.

[LindaJ^]

Rarely are "spoilers" a problem for me. I often look at my GR friend reviews when I'm on the edge about buying a book and then forget them before I read the book. I find that book blurbs are often worthless, often bearing little resemblance to what the book is actually about and stressing things that someone has decided makes the book sound appealing. There are things that may spoil a book for me, such as learning the author "helped" a girl get drunk, raped her, got off scott free, and is now a justice on SCOTUS.

On the movie/book front, I find that I usually like the book better than the movie, although some bad books have provided the inspiration for some good movies. Sometimes, though, a movie is better than the book, whether read before or after watching the movie.

[Whitney]

LindaJ^ wrote: "There are things that may spoil a book for me, such as learning the author "helped" a girl get drunk, raped her, got off scott free, and is now a justice on SCOTUS."

It definitely ruined the remains of a bottle of Irish Cream for me. I was fine with pouring it down the sink, though. Bailey's is far superior anyway.

[Vesna]

I am a magnet for spoilers especially when starting to read a doorstopper novel and it appears usually by authors of the Russian provenance. I am talking about suicides and deaths of main characters which are supposed to be climactic and, in one case, anti-climactic. I avoid reading reviews in advance, but made a foolish mistake to read introductions to Dostoyevsky's The Idiot and Turgenev's Fathers and Sons (this one is not really a doorstopper). There were no spoiler alerts in either edition I read. With this experience, I ignore prefaces and introductions until I finish the novel but then other odd coincidences happen.

I recently read T. Mann's Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family knowing about a spoiler about one character from Mann's wife's memoir and Tóibín's magnificent The Magician. I thought it had to be something minor given the numerous characters, but it turned out to be the very end of the novel.

And right now, while reading Dostoyevsky's Devils, I've intentionally avoided to read even remotely related material, completely isolating myself from any spoilers. Lo and behold, I took a break with a couple of other novels, totally unrelated to Dostoyevsky, only to see the main spoiler for D's Devils in one of them (!). Talk about bad luck. I still enjoy reading it but the climatic element is already gone well in advance.

[Emmeline]

I think Stacia summed up nicely so many things I would have said.

I don't mind seeing movies first, though if it's a book I was planning on reading anyway I'll often try to read it first. But with Victorian novels, I often used to use the TV versions as a test for whether I wanted to read 900 pages!

I read blurbs and back covers when I buy books but I try not to look at them again afterwards. Since books often spend time in the TBR pile, I hope to have forgotten any spoilers by the time I get to them.

Vesna, so annoying! I have had that happen to me too. The less you want a book spoiled, the more you tend to find spoilers in the strangest places...

[Jessica]

I also like to know as little as possible when I am about to read a book, like Robert said even the blurb can contain major plot points that I consider spoilers. And I also try not to watch movie or TV adaptations before reading the book because then I already know too much, even if they change parts of it for the adaptation, you already have the images or the characters in your head.

[Tracy]

Spoilers don’t always bother me. I tend to avoid the book if I’ve seen the movie first. And if I loved the book, I will watch for reviews of the movie before deciding to see it, so it won’t ruin the book.

This may sound like a book snob thing, but if the book is wildly popular, I tend to avoid it during that time. I’d rather read it before or long after the hype, and form my own opinion. Sometimes I may not read it at all- The Girl on the Train comes to mind.

[Kathleen]

I'm with Tracy. I too tend to avoid the over-popular ones. Still haven't read Harry Potter. Not sure I'm gonna. :-) And I haven't read The Girl on the Train either, for the same reason!

I don't think it's a snob thing. I think it's a tired of it thing. What spoils a book the most for me isn't so much hype from real life people or something I come across in my reading. It's banner and pop-up ads, like we're seeing more and more on this site. I'm sick of the book before I've even looked into it.