Bits of books I always skim/skip

Entertainment!
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Quotes at the start of chapters, the book, whatever: don’t really give a shit what inspired you
Poems/songs: I came here to read a novel, mate.

And those overly literary bits. I’m reading 1980 by David Peace right now (grim as) and here’s the opening page:

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There’s one of these between every chapter. I sort of got my way through the early ones but then the story gets really interesting and you stop in the middle of some tense bit and there’s one of these for a few pages. Yeah, fuck that, just get to the next bit.

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I actually skipped a whole boring section of Misery when I was reading that in school. Just sort of flicked ahead, got caught in the next bit I was reading and never remembered to go back.

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joy division fan is he?

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anything where a song or poem is reproduced mid chapter. any introductions written by some other author. anything that isn’t story basically.

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Quite possibly. Not sure I know what you’re referring to?

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i don’t skip bits of books, would probably just stop reading it if i didn’t want to read it

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also, obligatory theo robot gag

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handbags

:smiley:

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what if you didn’t want to read bits of it

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Well he wouldn’t be on here because he’d have stopped reading.

Unless he’s using some sort of text-to-speech software, I suppose.

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anyone use a speed reading app?

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you wouldn’t skip scenes in a film, would you? you wouldn’t download a car

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What is that? I’ve not heard of it. Does it just “Readers’ Digest” the book?

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reminds me that a mate in my teens said that LOTR were his favourite books but he skipped all the long descriptive passages. what else is there!?

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Tom Bombadil is a pretty standard example of this, no? (I don’t know, I’m not even on LotR-book)

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On a serious level are you saying you don’t find chapters written like that hard to read or are you saying that opening chapter would put you off bothering with the rest of the book on account of it being too weird?

(If the latter I’d be with you in many was if it weren’t for the fact that it’s book 3 of 4 and the first two didn’t do this.)

Another example: I remember trying to read the Silmarillion a few times and giving up on page 2 or 3, until someone said that if you skip ahead the style changes back to more standard LotR stuff.

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That’s just long description, though. It’s no deliberately confusing and lacking in punctuation. It’s not a paragraph of Shakespeare or someone before you get to actually begin reading the next chapter. Reading those quotations is like actively watching adverts in the middle of a film on TV…

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if it was just a couple of pages between chapters i’d just persevere with it. i tried reading a kerouac book ages back that was all like that, had no punctuation at all and couldn’t be doing with it

i don’t remember silmarillion being difficult to read but yeah it starts with the kind of genesis story but soon gets back into elves and men and rings and morgoth and whatnot. it’s my favourite now, mainly because it’s unsullied by peter jackson.

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The problem is that it’s between every chapter and most chapters end with some kind of cliffhanger/bombshell which makes working your way through these “interstitials” even more frustrating.

The Silmarillion is serveral books, IIRC. The first one is like some Bible shit that it just tonnes of new nouns and which is written as fully as the Bible is for Genesis. I just skipped that first bit and it became normal prose.

Can’t remember much about it all now, though.

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well it’s mainly a bunch of short stories that christopher tolkien edited into some kind of workable narrative, you can buy it in one volume. it’s not perfect but the good bits are really good.