Notes on Watching Other People Read
The next novel in the Outlander series* is coming out in November, and on a whim I joined the publisher's "official reread" group as people reread in preparation for the new volume.
What I have learned is that:
* a number of people skip prologues and epilogues because they don't understand they are part of the story? I saw a couple of comments to the effect that if it doesn't begin with "chapter" they don't think it's necessary to read.
* the usual "lol this is just for fun why do you have to analyze everything??" vs "if I pull together these two things there MUST be a connection because REASONS"
* admittedly it is a series of novels with several other novels, novellas, and short stories that go with it, but people's anxiety about reading "in order" is interesting. Also "I don't understand why I have to read this bit"--that bit was written 20 years after the other part, it's a fun fill-in-the-blank/slight recon to set new stuff up, but also it is TOTALLY UNNECESSARY and the way you can tell is it's IN A DIFFERENT SERIES. Ahem.
Anyway it's been an interesting look into how other people read.
*This series is.... heckin' problematic and doesn't age well. I first started reading them in the mid-90s when they were still fun to read, but all of the 2000s installments have been increasing slogs where the author overcompensates for historical criticisms of the early books. To say nothing of increasingly conservative gender politics and misbegotten attempts at tackling race and such. ANYWAY.
What I have learned is that:
* a number of people skip prologues and epilogues because they don't understand they are part of the story? I saw a couple of comments to the effect that if it doesn't begin with "chapter" they don't think it's necessary to read.
* the usual "lol this is just for fun why do you have to analyze everything??" vs "if I pull together these two things there MUST be a connection because REASONS"
* admittedly it is a series of novels with several other novels, novellas, and short stories that go with it, but people's anxiety about reading "in order" is interesting. Also "I don't understand why I have to read this bit"--that bit was written 20 years after the other part, it's a fun fill-in-the-blank/slight recon to set new stuff up, but also it is TOTALLY UNNECESSARY and the way you can tell is it's IN A DIFFERENT SERIES. Ahem.
Anyway it's been an interesting look into how other people read.
*This series is.... heckin' problematic and doesn't age well. I first started reading them in the mid-90s when they were still fun to read, but all of the 2000s installments have been increasing slogs where the author overcompensates for historical criticisms of the early books. To say nothing of increasingly conservative gender politics and misbegotten attempts at tackling race and such. ANYWAY.