But click "Reveal". This is in fact a book.
Edit: It seems the website overrides the `←` and `→` arrow keys specifically, and using `event.preventDefault()` causes the problem. I think it's good practice to ignore keys with modifiers in such a situation.
When I read How To Read a Book, I was quite impressed. In practice ... it's not very useful for the types of book I read. Likely better for deeper, philosophical books (including fiction of that category).
For a lot of fiction books, my rule is to read the first 50 pages. If I'm not engaged, move on. Life is short. I believe Stephen King also used that heuristic. It's fine if you miss out on some great books. You're not going to get to read all of them anyway.
I would also use it if I was doing a really deep dive in a fiction work.
For most fiction that I am reading for entertainment, the first 50ish pages will tell me if its worth finishing.
Why would "A blue Ford just parked in front of the door. Jim still hasn't truly fully woken up but he was already making breakfast..." incite me to read the book?
Compare that to The Poppy War which I just discovered:
"Take your clothes off. Rin blinked. What? Cheating prevention protocol."
Also, some of the best tv shows I watched need a couple episodes build up to get a nice payout.
And as for Frank Herbert's Dune, I gave it a try. I read the first two books, and was 20% of my way through the third when I realized that "No, this whole story is not going to get good ever."
Should have just stopped after a few pages of the first book :-)
I've read plenty of books on recommendation that I think are great, but they were not the kind of books that could start with a hook I think.
But, the counterargument to this is if it helps people start books, then who cares if it is an effective strategy or not.
It certainly doesn't. Not that it matters to people who love reading books, for they know judging a whole book by its first page(s), or based on some formula extracted from one of those silly self-improvement tomes, is just ridiculous (especially the latter reminiscent of "Pritchard's graph" from Dead Poets Society).
rao-v•3h ago