One problem I’ve been having lately with movies in particular is that the “twists” are pretty darned blatant almost from the start. In a mediocre movie, this is a deal-breaker, but if a movie is made well enough or has something else to offer, then I’ll happily watch the rest of it.

Instead, it’s DVDs and the TV projector for me: Movies at home with surround sound. I might only watch something every 3-4 weeks, but I enjoy it immensely.

I’m just glad you read it and found bits fascinating. How you read it, particularly in light of the way I read things, is something between you and the text.

I didn’t read HP for about 3 weeks either, and I was careful to avoid spoilers.

Because for me? It’s all about the journey. Knowing if someone lives or dies, falls in love or not, doesn’t spoil my enjoyment of HOW they got there. (And yes, Kelly, I do the same to your books, because I happen to find Ravirn and Cerice fascinating and I HAD to know how they turn out…)

As a reviewer, I am almost pathologically opposed to revealing spoilers to other people, though. Unless they outright ask me, I will just nod and smile and refuse to give away The Big Twist. In my reviews, I will tease and tantalize and try to make people want to buy the book for themselves.
I believe in a certain code of reviewer ethics that says Thou Shalt Not Spoil The Book For Others. :>

Just my two cents.

If I’m enjoying a book but sense a train wreck coming on–this happens more than I’d like–I’ll flip to the back to see if I get the train wreck. If I do, I put the book in the goes to the used bookstore stack. If I don’t I read on. Likewise, if I’m not enjoying a book much after the first 10 pages or so, I’ll flip to the back to see if it goes where I think it’s going, or if it gets better. If it gets better, I’ll give it another 10-50 pages before I make a decision about whether or not to put it aside.

With HP, I had very strong sense that one kind of ending would be a betrayal of why I read Rowling. I flipped to the end solely to see if Harry lived, trying to avoid all other spoilers. Once I knew the answer to that question agreed with what I’m interested in seeing, I was willing to read on. If it hadn’t, I wouldn’t have bothered.

I can’t stand it when reviewers reveal the story ending! I don’t mind it so much if they just give you the “set up” (i.e., what makes the situation interesting), but they often go too far! What’s the point in creating a story with some tension and suspense if some reviewer (or trailer-maker in the case of movies) is going to poke a hole and let the tension all leak out beforehand?

I went to a reading at a con once where the author read from his third book in a series. I had read only the first book; the second one had come out fairly recently and the third one wasn’t due out for months (he read from m.s. pages) and he read from near the end of the book! I totally didn’t get why. He told us not only that the protagonist survived but the villain and some of the secondary characters were still around. It’s called a reading not a spoiling!

Doh!

I do agree with David–if I like a book, I’ll reread it and more than once. Same with movies. And now it appears I need to actually watch The Prestige, which I taped on the DVR recently and haven’t got around to.

Adrianne