Thanks!

Oh no! I hadn’t heard this! I’ve never visited Chincoteague, but we vacationed on Assateague when I was small, and I adored the book.

Of course not! It’s a good habit to read the amount of pages you have time for and can concentrate on. You are doing the perfect amount for you. That’s an accomplishment, not a bad habit.

I think most mystery readers would riot if the mystery weren’t solved. For that you need to be a lit writer and she wasn’t; she was a genre writer.

I would figure out what your reading level in English is and aim there or a little higher. Schools here use lexile levels, you could test yourself and aim for that level and stretch just above it.

Or, If you want to practice reading books at a higher level, choose something that you’re really familiar with in Portuguese (or another language you’re very competent in). If your spoken English is good, and your written English is as good as it is here, I think it will only take you a short time to be reading the type of books you are interested in.

You could also pick up a literary guide to the novel and read that alongside to get a better understanding as you go along.

I don’t but this is because I tend to already know everything that will happen before I choose to read a book. Plot, spoilers, everything. Before tons of online reviews were so available I used to read a chapter (or some pages) from the beginning, middle, and end before purchasing; so I guess I sort of read the last page; just in a broader context.

I found this less of an issue with the method outlined; since you’re essentially breaking the spine invisibly. But this is definitely more of an issue with mass markets, and I get why it would be frustrating.

And from the same perspective; I get why you don’t like them. I adore them; but that’s a side effect of how I read; they make reading easier for me but harder for you. No judgement here, either!

Once I learned the method outlined in another post, open a few pages at the front, a few pages at the back, keep going; I have never visibly cracked another spine.

Trade paperbacks function in the same way as mass market paperbacks unless they have a crease down the cover. I hold paperbacks in one hand. Trades crack as easily as mass market paperbacks when you read like that, or if you fold pages back, or read books multiple times. (The no-crack spine trick works for trades as well.)

I have literally talked to whole slews of readers who do. not. care. A book can have poor grammar, bad editing, multiple errors, no plot; they still love it. It’s about character of some aspect of the story that pulls them in and they just literally do not care about the rest. It’s mind-boggling.

Oh my god. Thought this was a totally different sub and was so confused by the title.

I’ve also seen a more academic critique where the author suggested that part of her saying that about Pemberley was that despite the fact that the grounds are massive and the house one of wealth, the grounds were not over-maintained…they weren’t made into follies or fake paths; they were maintained as a natural setting, and Pemberley wasn’t overly ostentatious for its wealth (Elizabeth comments on this in the book); meaning that Darcy has good sense about natural spaces and about wealth that she might not have appreciated at first, but when we saw Pemberley, it showed he did not try to basically be as bling-y as possible. (I think the mention by Elizabeth is at the beginning of book 3).

That’s really interesting. I’m usually more irked if there are major world changes, because I usually think that despite those things, the world will pretty much chug along the same as it always did.

In general, though, I’m really good at suspending disbelief in all sorts of ways that annoy other people, and just taking those things at face value in order to enjoy the book for what it is.

General population or me? If you’re talking about me, specifically, I’m an outlier. When I’m looking for a book I don’t look for a title or a cover that interest me (because those really have no bearing on whether a book will be good or not), I click into the link of every single book in the category I’m looking at, read the back blurb, any additional descriptive content, and then, if it sounds interesting, read reviews until I’ve found out all the plot and spoilers. If I still like what I see, I read the book.

I might read the blurb, descriptive content, and reviews of five hundred books before I find one I want to read (if I’m looking online, and I usually am). I do this every day because I read one to two books per day and it’s rare for me to have a backlog of books waiting to be read.

So…number of books with plot, spoilers, and endings I could remember well enough to describe, talk about in a general conversation, or perhaps recommend to someone based on their likes (with the caveat that I haven’t read it, of course)? Hundreds, at least. Thousands probably, given slight prompting, though I’m sure I would have lost at least some of the details, given I didn’t find the book interesting enough to read at the time.

I am probably not the right audience (that is completely the wrong word; my brain feels like mush today). I had collected everything Christie wrote by the time I was 14. I was suuuper into mystery when I was 13-14, so I know I am more aware of her novels than most. But I was also thinking of adaptations in regular tv shows where a single episode will have been jumped off a plot (of many authors, not just Christie), and the fact that Christie, especially, is mentioned everywhere. There are recent French adaptations of her novels on prime right now.

I may just be more involved in reading about the books and authors I’m interested in than many? It would be atypical for me not to know at least the basic life history, novels published and when, and their plots of any author I pick up. I’ll typically look up even the authors and their publications of even the fluffiest fluff I read. I do this for tv shows, too, so I typically know if an individual episode is based on a book or short story or film, even if it’s one I’m not familiar with.

Edit to split a paragraph so it wasn’t just a wall of text.

I haven’t had a chance yet today, but I will look for the study.

I’ve read Christie’s books multiple times. My enjoyment of books doesn’t come from not knowing but from good writing, cleverness, plot, characterization, world-building, etc. It would never occur to me that people reading Christie, who first published in 1920, would have no knowledge of what the plots of her books were, even if they hadn’t been actively interested in her works before reading. She is discussed in secondary schools and universities, she is part of some reading curriculums. She is discussed when other mystery writers are discussed. The expectation exists that one does not have to warn against plot points for novels published 46 to 102 years ago.

I was an editor. Typically, books that are older are considered already “spoiled”. They’ve been out for years, and the information on what happens in them is widely available in critiques, literary, newspaper, and magazine reviews, internet content, radio plays of the past, television, films, and plays, so there is considered no reason to try to keep spoilers out of forwards and such, and no reason for a warning, since consumers should have the expectation that information that has already been revealed in multiple ways in multiple places could also be covered in this place. Book backs and inside blurbs also often give the outcome on editions that were published years ago. One was just shown of Pride and Prejudice on a different sub I’m on.

I think it’s an unreasonable expectation that the rest of the world contain spoilers on older books. I try hard in personal reviews to hide or not give away spoilers on new books, because one can still read those without having major plot points or spoilers revealed; but there can be no such expectation in older works.

Because Agatha Christie’s works are everywhere, in book form, film, television show, and theatre. It is expected that the average reader will already know the plot when reading. (And there was a study done, that showed people enjoyed reading a story more when they knew what was going to happen, even if they thought they wouldn’t. I’ll have to see if I can find it.)

Almost all books that are older and have new forwards or etc will have spoilers in them, because it is expected that people already know what happens. You typically have to work pretty hard not to know the plot and spoilers of major works of fiction older than ten years old. I think it’s unreasonable to expect that older books won’t be spoiled, and if you don’t want them to be, it’s on the reader to avoid anything that might.

I used to use a trackball mouse at work. I was not a fan, but some of my coworkers loved it.

My reading tastes have changed as I’ve matured, but not away from reading fiction for entertainment. I do read a lot of non-fiction, but in a research capacity (which I enjoy, but am not doing strictly for enjoyment, if you get my drift). I’ve never been much into non-fiction just for enjoyment’s sake, and I rarely read memoirs or poetry of anything along those lines. I would say less than 5% of my “fun” reading is non-fiction.

I’ve read The Lord of the Rings about fifteen times, The Belgariad about 25 (maybe more?), The Blue Castle about thirty, the Anne of Green Gables and Emily series at least the same. Those are off the top of my head, but I have books I’ve read fifty or more times. I read a lot and I love to reread books.

I’ve always kept track of the books I read. Goodreads allows me to do it automatically. I don’t really use it except to find out about books, read reviews, and keep a list of books I’ve read. It never feels like a race or achievement to me, just a list. I do set the challenge each year; but I set it at the rate at which I read, not in order to challenge myself to read more than normal. I don’t find the interface hard to use though, either; I find it very intuitive. I’m very word oriented so it works for me. I don’t use the community aspect of goodreads at all unless you count reading reviews.

I read the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy to my oldest (I honestly forget if I started with the Hobbit) when they were three. They loved it.