Woah!!! That’s incredible! I might look into that.

Big time. Another thing I always do is check the date it was published, gives me a sense of context that I like.

>blindly invalided because the person offering it doesn't belong to a particular demographic.

and i never said they should be. my point is that there may be less weight to your opinion than you want simply because you are not familiar with the subject matter. so your opinion being invalidated could be because it is, in this case, a Shit Take and not a subjective opinion.

I do! And sub to their newsletters, etc. Especially up and coming ones. As an artist, I know the feedback and engagement means a lot. I also preorder when the author is newish in their career.

We all have lives outside of reddit. Getting no reply is not a permission to post. /r/SampleSize is always an option for your survey.

Okay, this is not about me throwing a book across the room but how a thrown book led to an award winning series.

There was a woman named Virginia Lanier -poor and with a modest education, but a voracious reader. I heard that when they published that list of 100 great books, she already read 98 of them. Anyway, one day she got so disgusted with a book she threw it across the room and told her husband she could write better, so he said, "Why don't you?" The result was the first in her "bloodhound" series, "Death in Bloodhound Red" about a woman who trains bloodhounds for search and rescue. It won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel. Lanier was 65 when it was published.

Hi there. This subject has been very popular in the past. Please use reddit search and/or check the /r/books/wiki/faq.

It took me one incredible book to be able to read and finish books. I used to be a lot like you in that I read books, but didn’t finish them. Find a good book you resonate with, read more by that author and you won’t have to worry and the mechanics of reading. That’s my advice.

Also, I would say sometimes when I am in a reading rut, I read trash books (cheesy autobiography, sports book, etc) to get me going.

Sometimes but not really. I think that it is interesting though to know that someone like j.k. Rowling can begin to write a series with the accompaniment of deep depression. To write fantasy like that while your brain is scraping the bottom only makes me imagine her book as more of an escape the more I think about it.

Let's clarify this a little: she was married to Walter Breen, noted pedophile and high ranking member of NAMBLA. She most definitely was a pedophile as well.

Read something that interests you. Then you won't have much trouble finishing it.

I never set page goals unless I am not enjoying the book but need to read it for work or study. I used to read a novel in about 3 days before I had a stroke. Now it is a week or more if I can get time. Find a book you enjoy and let it take you outside of your life and into the new world. Discworld did it for me, but so does Stephen King. Don't worry about 'worthy' books. I have a degree, work in a library, but will read a classic or something mainstream and love both.

Fortunately with videos on the web they say "Watch till the end!" so you know not to start.

Never managed to understand the title. Wolf Hall is the Seymour home, nothing to do with Cromwell or Anne Boleyn.

And it did take me a surprisingly long time to read. And I've been procrastinating about the sequels for years.

Like a Million Little Pieces. I knew it was a farce and I had to sell his books so I researched.

Authors I will look up to see if they have any actual credentials to back up their writing or learn their backstory. I’ve met several and don’t recommend this. But I was a bookseller. I was invited to meet one of my favorite fine artists a few months ago and declined. I’ve met a number of NFL players and genuinely liked them (two were childhood friends), Marcus Allen was just a great guy I met at a bookstore. The rule, ‘don’t meet your heroes’ is a rule for a reason. You’ll be disappointed.

depends on the book. Sometimes I like going completely blind and other times I feel like having some type of background knowledge is nice to know. I was recently reading Frankenstein and I could not believe Mary Shelley started writing it at only 18 years old.

To become a good reader, set realistic goals and read consistently. Explore different genres and authors to find books that interest you. When you find a good book you will devour it!:)

Londonstani by Gautam Malkani. It's got one of those fashionable plot twists close to the end. The problem with that was if you had managed to like the book up until then, which I had, despite it not being the easiest read, the plot twist invalidated everything you'd previously liked about the book.

For the sake of being smartarsed, spoil your story. No wonder it's less popular than the publishers hoped.

I'm not saying it's an objective fact. I never once did. I understand how opinions work.

Nor am I saying that my opinions should be taken as the gospel truth. Often I have a shit take. I'm sure you have the occasional shit take. Everyone can have a shit take.

I'm saying my SUBJECTIVE opinions on a book I've read - anyone's subjective opinions for that matter - shouldn't be automatically and blindly invalided because the person offering it doesn't belong to a particular demographic.

Bradley became infamous when her daughter accused her and her husband of sex abuse and molestation. This compounded darkly with Bradley's writing in Mists of Avalon, where sex was a big theme in the story (and not just sex, but incest as well as parental abuse). Prior to the scandal, the themes were light enough to be written off as part of the fantasy.

'Different time, different place, different moral scruples.'

After her daughter's accusations, it becomes hard not to know about the scandal and not see Mists as an expression of Bradley's outlook on sex. And given the accusation that outlook is most politely summed up as 'pretty damn fucked up.'

So don't worry about a page amount at first as some books require more time per page then others.

I started by reading for 15 minutes a day and if I wanted to continue I would.

As far as books you should be reading. Read books that you enjoy. When I was younger I blew through James Patterson books. Which led to me reading Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy. Now I'm reading classics like Dostoyevsky and contemporary works by Murakami and ishiguro

No. The only time I used to do that was in school when the authors life were critical to understand the context of their works.

Actually a genius postmodern technique that illustrates how the stories never actually end. We'll carry them on in our minds and speculate our own ideas of what the ideal ending could've or should've been.

Hello, per that rule, it is written to contact the mods, as this is an academic survey. I have contacted you 3 times in the last week and a half but nobody replied.