Open a book

>open a book
>50 pages long editorial foreword
Why do these people assume anyone gives a shit?

Fully appreciating any book requires a good amount of historical, biographical, and critical context. It's okay to read the forward after you're done reading the actual text, but if you completely ignore it, you are a pleb.

Tenure is often predicated on writing these introductions.

You don't but someone else might, because one person's view doesn't necessarily reflect that of everyone. It's a concept called subjectivity.

You can choose to skip the foreword, OP. Or are you not capable?

I wonder this too OP, like, I don't want context, or prior knowledge, give me the greeks, whales, chinese warlords, and romans n' shit.

>He requires a good amount of historical, biographical, and critical context to appreciate a book

Leave.

>predicated on
Shitty phrase to use.

kys, retard

I assume it's a thing put in there to encourage plebs to read books, but idk.

Is it too much to skim 50 pages you fucking child?

As a completionist, it triggers me to leave things in a book unread

>open book
>read forward
>it spoils every important plot point

That's just what you've been taught in university, isn't it?

>be italian
>buy Inferno
>no translation needed
>34 pages
>but +400 of notes and editorials
>buy petrarch's canzoniere
>366 poems, most of them are sonnets
>it's a 1600 pages IJ-looking monster
>buy Boccaccio's Decameron
>1200 pages
>1 of 2 books

>extracts

>you'll never be enthusiastic enough about a book to write a 50 page editorial

Please don't reply to my post again unless you have a real argument with actual points and logic. Thanks.

ngiger

>he doesn't read the critical apparatus

Get over it and skip 'em. I do all the time because I don't want some faggot trying to influence my first interpretation of a book.

>not reading it last

That's pretty much a truism, though. I mean, what do you think language even is?

This is pretty much the way to do it if you're going to read intros at all. Though in certain cases you get things that are more like broader commentaries on the author, and those can be ok to read first, especially if you're already familiar with whoever it is you're reading.

I had no idea Inferno was that short. Without the notes, how long is the Divine Comedy?

>open a book
>foreword spoils the major twist
>read with a feeling of futility, never being able to enjoy the surprises of the story as the author intended

Put it at the end if it spoils the book you stupid fucks

It's 34 chants, and each one is long 136 to 142 verses