The Sword and Laser discussion

I try to avoid trailers, advertisements, interviews, and reviews until after I have read the book. I like to be startled and bewildered by my art (at least at first).

I should add that this book selection is one of those cases. As an "essential worker" I can''t always afford to keep up with the club and by the time the interlibrary loans come through the ship has often sailed. I was stoked to see that this one was on Hoopla. I get to read along with y'all! I saw the title, searched Hoopla, and grabbed it without knowing anything about it. I only just started but so far it is dope.

1. Yes, I prefer that.

2. Even if you don’t read the book at the same time everyone else does, you can still participate in discussions. That’s the beauty of the asynchronous internet. Not a guarantee anyone will respond, but someone might; you never know.

I prefer it, but it isn't a deal killer. I have been spoiled on many books/movies/TV shows and still enjoyed the experience.

Would I have enjoyed it more unspoilt? Maybe.

^ I appreciated the clue you gave or I would have been wondering for a long while how this could be SFF. As it was I twigged to a few things early. I'll avoid bad spoilers but some just come with the blurb. No way to go in completely cold.

I may be weird but I love spoilers. I actively search them out. I just like to know stuff and don't get any special extra joy out of being surprised.
For example I enjoyed The Sixth Sense and The Fight Club the first time I watched them but I enjoyed them way more on subsequent viewings when I was looking for certain things.
"It's the journey, not the destination".
I have a friend who sometimes reads the last chapter of a book shortly after he starts it because he doesn't want to get too attached to anyone who might die. That's a little weird even for me.

I much prefer being spoiled. Most people who know me know that's a given, though my sister still goes "Oh, I can't tell you, it'll ruin it for you" a LOT. (It's usually not even something I'm ever going to see or read.)

I will usually learn as much as I need to know about a thing to know I want to read/watch it. For a book group pick, that might be nothing at all, meaning I went into Terra Nullist completely blind. I have sometimes stopped reading a review mid sentence, because once I've made my mind up, I don't need to read anything else!

Phil wrote: "For example I enjoyed The Sixth Sense and The Fight Club the first time I watched them but I enjoyed them way more on subsequent viewings when I was looking for certain things."

I think there's a huge difference between watching something for a second time vs watching something for the first time that was spoiled. For example, on the day my family and I were planning to go to the cinema to watch Sixth Sense, some ass hat spoiled the reveal to me. I kept my family in the dark, and enjoyed the film anyway, watching out for all the clues. We all watched the film a year later, and my family loved watching out for the clues, but I found the second viewing kind of boring. My experience was very different to theirs, because of the spoiler.

On the other hand, I listen to a film podcast, and there have been films I have had no interest in that I have really wanted to watch after the discussion. I think I have enjoyed such films more because the discussion gave me things to watch out for and consider.

I guess my answer is, it depends.

I don’t like spoilers. But I like book reviews & movie trailers to get an idea if it will be worth my time, and money. (One of my reasons for being in S&L is to find out “what the good books are.”)

I often avoid spoilers now. Especially movie trailers. On here, I often avoid the discussions if I'm waiting for the book. Since I'm skipping this pick, I figured I'd look at this one. ;-)

Someone spoiled The Sixth Sense for me & I felt robbed of the experience of watching it cold.

Interesting comments. I think the older I get the more I believe in "death of the author". I feel like so much of a creative endeavor is happy accident and unconscious influence that I want to try to minimize my exposure to what the people involved "meant" to do. I especially want to avoid what the advertising wants me to think about it. In junior high school I had one of those magical English teachers that changes your life forever. She suggested that you should take in a work twice before you can analyze it. The first time to just be present and let it wash over you, the second to really examine how the sausage was made.

I prefer to go in blind but in some cases I find authors have become so lazy that they rely on the blurb on the cover instead of doing any worldbuilding themselves. i.e last months pick. If I get to about page 50-60 without it making any sense I go and read the available blurp/hype info.

For the most part, I try to avoid spoilers for books. I'm less fussy when it comes to TV/movies for some reason. I think it's because books were my first source of entertainment as a child. I'm trying to recapture that sense of wonder I had when reading a book for the first time. Probably a pointless endeavor as I am now old and cynical. :)

I like going in blind too, but have recently been burned by blurbs/summations on the covers of books.

The Three-Body Problem has a promotional summary that mentions (view spoiler)[ aliens (hide spoiler)] but that's something the author doesn't confirm until more than half-way through the book. There was a similar summary for A Shadow in Summer. These are things that could have had some suspense/shock value, but didn't because of a publisher's decision.

Is what you mention for "The Three-Body Problem" a spoiler?

It's what the whole series is about 🤨 How do you explain the book to a potential buyer without mention that it is an (view spoiler)[Alien contact story (hide spoiler)]

A minor spoiler for that book would be (view spoiler)[finding out they want to kill us. (hide spoiler)]

Seth wrote: "I like going in blind too, but have recently been burned by blurbs/summations on the covers of books.

The Three-Body Problem has a promotional summary that mentions [spoilers remov..."

I listened to an interview with the author of a book that was getting some good reviews, and the author was very careful not to share any spoilers. Even the book blurb didn’t give anything away. Sounded interesting. Then I stumbled across someone on Goodreads who does a lot of reviews, and she unapologetically gave away the reveal in the first line of her review. When I replied and asked her to please use spoiler tags, her response was so rude, I blocked her.

Totally ruined the book for me, so I never bothered to read it.

Tina wrote: "Seth wrote: "I like going in blind too, but have recently been burned by blurbs/summations on the covers of books.

The Three-Body Problem has a promotional summary that mentions [s..."

Yeah. Perhaps I got to it too late to really be upset about spoilers, but it's right there in the Goodreads description too - which I suppose came from a publisher somewhere. I didn't really connect with the style of the book, but would have been more invested without knowing this fact, for sure.

I'm still pissed off at the Time Magazine reviewer who spoiled the Yoda bit before I could see Empire. I suppose I should be glad they didn't give away the Darth Vader bit. One small bit of good came out of that: I was so annoyed on the subject of premature reveals that I spent several years turning off shows that were about to reference that bit so that when my daughter was old enough, we played Empire for her and she was surprised. At Darth, the Yoda bit had long since been spoiled by the prequels.

For any book that's an unknown quantity (like a book club pick!) I tend to browse at least a couple of Goodreads reviews to get a sense of whether it's something I'll enjoy.

In the case of Terra Nullius I curtailed that a bit because everyone mentions "the twist" and I didn't want to spoil it for myself. Unfortunately, armed with the knowledge that (a) it definitely is sci-fi and (b) there's a big twist, I saw it coming a mile away.

Bit of a catch 22 situation. The fact that it's sci-fi was effectively a spoiler, but if it wasn't shelved as sci-fi then I would most likely never have read it.

I’ve started reading Terra Nullius knowing almost nothing about it, and I’m glad I did because I’m enjoying trying to figure it out.

I usually prefer to read/watch things totally cold but I’m not super spoiler-phobic: if I’m not sure whether I’ll enjoy something or not I’ll read about it first. Sometimes content warnings mean spoilers, and I’m ok with that.

Colin wrote: "For any book that's an unknown quantity (like a book club pick!) I tend to browse at least a couple of Goodreads reviews to get a sense of whether it's something I'll enjoy.

In the case of Terra N..."

Claire Coleman wrote it’s SF and wanted it sold that way. Part of the story telling is waiting for the shoe to drop

I prefer to not know what will happen, as nothing beats the sense of surprise. I too was spoiled before the Sixth Sense and, while I enjoyed it, I did not get that whole sense of Wow, where I put all the pieces together and want to watch it again to see what I missed. I got that out of the Matrix and Inception and had those Wow moments where I was surprised and tantalized in a fresh way.

I am rather spoiler averse, generally, but there are times where I purposely spoil myself. Sometimes, I’m too invested and thus get stressed about how things will turn out. This happened with the 6th and 7th Harry Potter books. I had to read the spoilers of who died in book 6 and had to read the end of Deathly Hallows first to see if the trio survived. This is also why if I ever had kids, I would have to learn the gender of the baby as early as possible.
But for things I’m not quite as invested in, I prefer to avoid spoilers and let the story unfold on its own for me. For books/shows/movies that I know I will skip, I also don’t mind spoilers and will sometimes look them up to know the things.

I'm amused to see so many references to The Sixth Sense. Apparently I'm one of the few who twigged to the surprise in the opener. The kid says "I see dead people" and my "Hollywood-Ometer" went off and I thought "so of course he's dead and you're letting him down easy." Well, I didn't know it for sure but I suspected from the getgo. I dunno if I would have been pissed had it been spoiled outright.

I'm, personally, not big on spoilers. But, I don't actively run away from them. That said, I'm avoiding the "Wait, what?" thread even though I've already read past chapter 10. I'll wait until I've finished the book just so I don't see any spoilers in that thread for chapters past 10. (Thank you to tilltab for mentioning the spoilers in the topic subject so I could make the informed decision to hold off reading that thread until I feel that I'm ready.)

John (Taloni) wrote: "I'm still pissed off at the Time Magazine reviewer who spoiled the Yoda bit before I could see Empire. I suppose I should be glad they didn't give away the Darth Vader bit. One small bit of good ca..."

You let your child watch the prequels before the original trilogy?
Blasphemy! jk ;-)