or: Please do not spoil books.
Twice in this last week during my non-usual Google-Readering I've had several books mildly ruined for me. They include: Along For the Ride, Shiver, the Vampire Academy series, Willow, Evermore, Fallen, and most recently, How I Live Now and the Mortal Instruments books.
Good week, hey?
Some of those are small enough that I'll forget them immediately, but others, including things about character's sexual decisions, relationships, and GIGANTIC PLOT POINTS, I doubt I'll be able to get out of my head. The best example of this is the Mortal Instrument books, which happened just today, where someone (I'm not naming names) revealed a MAJOR plot point on someone else's blog about an entirely different book (I'm not linking to it).
The other ones... I mostly got over. But I own SIGNED COPIES OF CITY OF GLASS/ASHES/BONES! And I was REALLY looking forward to them. I will probably still read them, but chances are it won't be for ages in attempt to forget what I read. Because it was GIGANTIC and would colour my reading of the books.
And maybe you're saying "But Laina, they're popular books!" (and if you are, you're not nice), but they haven't been out that long! The third book was only published in 2009. It's not unheard of for me to not have read a book that's only a year old. There are a LOT of books out there.
Basically, here's a lesson for the future. If you reveal a major plot point or character thing or ANYTHING big about a book, please give a WARNING so people like me know to stop reading. And if you don't, don't be surprised to one day be randomly beat with a copy of the book you spoiled.
And also if you ever spoil a book in my comments, I'll delete it.
(Sorry for all the capitals. I love you guys and love it when you comment. No spoilers, kay?)
Peace and slightly burned cookies,
Laina
(Please go read my bookcase post after you're done leaving nice spoiler free comments here, okay?)
Generally, I love book discussion, where a review is not vague, but instead analyses the intricacies of the story. However, I understand your concern, and agree with the fact that spoiler warnings should be placed before (and after, if the person doesn't want to catch the tail end of) the spoiler, whether it's in comments or a review.
ReplyDeleteYou know what I read and how they handled it. I don't believe that's too much to ask for to not have that, is it?
ReplyDeleteI don't think you have to give away major portions of a story in order to discuss it. And if you do, you need to put up a warning that there are spoilers in the post and in comments. We don't all read at the same speed. And if too much info is given out, why should I read the book if I've already been told the key points?
ReplyDeleteNot to toot my own horn, but I think I do fine discussing books without spoiling them in by reviews. And the thing that really rubs me raw was that the post was a Waiting on Wednesday for ANOTHER book, and not even a Cassandra Clare book.
ReplyDeleteI agree.
ReplyDeleteThe problem for me is that, often people post spoilers without even knowing it. I remember when the information for Linger came out. It was all over everyone's blogs, and pretty much gave away a large chunk of what happened in Shiver. I hadn't read Shiver yet... and I still haven't. It's hard to get excited about a book when I pretty much know how it's going to end.
What's the solution to that? Not posting about books that excite you, just because slow readers (like me) might not have gotten to the first book in the series yet? I don't know. It's a tough call.
All I know is that I'm a lot more careful now when I read reviews. I sometimes don't read them (or book synopses) at all if I have a feeling I might hit a spoiler.
I haven't read Shiver either. I've purposely avoided reading anything about Linger because of that. The post that I read that spoiled Shiver WASN'T about Linger, it was about something else entirely.
ReplyDeleteI've noticed that a lot of blogs, when they post about series books, post a warning like "may contain spoilers if you haven't read the previous books".
Not a good week :( I hate spoilers as well. If i see a post title in my Google Reader for a book I want to read I just click mark as read. I like to go into a book knowing nothing. I also try to always post a spoiler warning if I’m reviewing past book 1 in a series. With all that said I’ll probably screw up and post a spoiler soon LOL.
ReplyDeleteYeah... I got some other not so good news, too, so YAY for this week.
ReplyDeleteBut that's off-topic.
I think that if you're reading a review or a blog post or anything about a book that's not the first in a series, you're going it knowing that it can spoil earlier books.
But if I go into a post about, say, Scarlett Fever by Maureen Johnson, say, I don't expect to get a Hush Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick spoiler, you know? And I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a warning when someone does that, do you?