/lit/ - Literature

Perhaps it's a historically important work of literature that deserves an indepth examination accompanying it for those who wish to read it for an indepth study than merely gratifying their own desire for amusement

to add page count to short books

>>14537906
>go to /lit/
>people are complaining about getting more material to read in a book

>>14537958
Introductions are a waste of everyone's time

>>14537906
What book?
If it's historical account or a diary, I'll personally kill you.

>>14538029
Goethe's Faust

>>14538032
>book itself is only like 150 pages

>>14538050
It's only part one. Part Two from this publisher is a separate volume with a separate introduction.

>>14538065
150 pages? Really?

>buy the communist manifesto
>over half the book is the introduction by someone trying to explain what Marx is even trying to say in the second half

>>14538079
Explanatory notes start on page 149.

>>14537973
>person spends years studying the era and the writer, and sums up their knowledge that might be useful to the reader
>lol that's a waste of time
Why don't you just skip it if you dislike it so much anyway?

>>14538092
That's exactly what I do.

>>14538102
Great. You can delete the thread now

>>14538105
I'm not OP

>>14538105
He's not the OP.

>>14537906
Introductions are really annoying. It's like going to meet a friend and suddenly a stranger turns up and delivers a long, unwanted monologue, then tries to sell you insurence, which you decline, which angers him so much that he takes out a Japanese single-edged blade and kills you. It's just so unnecessary.

Am I supposed to read these sorta things first or after?
I just acquired a Oxford Worlds Classics copy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for like a dollar secondhand. Absolutely bargain, so I'm not complaining.
There's about 40-50 pages of Introductions, notes of the text, appendices and explanatory notes, for only a couple hundred pages of actual story.
Don't get me wrong I understand the motivation, but do they expect me to read all that before I start the book? And the 3 appendices after? Or is only for people who have read and are now studying the book?

>>14538132
you may as well read it. introductions are generally a hit or miss. sometimes they can give you insight onto the text and other times it can be just a bore that you sludge through

>>14538105
I'm not that poster, and I'm not the OP.

>>14538032
>>14538065
Dude they are entirely different works written 20 years apart. The first is kind of a traditional story while the second is nearly a philosophical treatise on life, and combined they are arguably the greatest work of German literature, and their author WAS an era. No shit there’s gonna be a long introduction. Just skip it if you aren’t interested, moron.

>>14538105
I'm not the OP either

>>14538105
I am the OP

>>14538126
That's a terrible analogy and you know it.