Wednesday 20 June 2012

Woolgather Wednesday (2) - Spoilers? For or Against?

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So another subject that can have people who are usually very calm individuals - kind to their children and always leave tips at restaurants – throwing gazillion page tomes at each other’s heads. 

How do you feel about *whisper* spoilers?

Hate them? Love them? Don’t really care?

Well, if I am honest I am a bit of all three – undecided much.

See, it’s like this. If I am in the book and I am about to pick up a book by an author that I haven’t heard of I will read the blurb. But then after finding out who the main characters are and the general gist of the story I will then read the last few pages. So I would call that a pretty huge spoiler. I know this is a terrible thing to do – or some one of my friends has been telling me for years – but the way I see it is that I am not going to spend £7.99 on a book and spend hours reading it to not like the ending. But there is a difference between knowing the ending and knowing how we got there, that is the kind of spoilers I don’t like.

If I am reading a series of books I don’t skip to the end of the novels to see how it will end as in my book it doesn’t matter as it could all go to hell in the next book. I don’t mind some spoilers for a series, for the next book or whatever, as long as there aren’t any crazy spoilers like “oh you know how Z has been trying to decide between Y and X the past 4 books well guess what? They chose…”  THAT is the kind of spoiler that when it appears without warning has we ready to chuck a nice and heavy special edition copy of War and Peace at someone. I mean, really. I don’t want to know that! And without a warning or anything!! (Yes, this has happened to me, it was a sad occasion)



And then we have would could be called the ultimate spoiler. When the book is turned into a movie or a TV show (Google Game of Thrones). Personally I don’t like to see the film before I have had a chance to read the book. I like to read the book so I can have a good moan about the way it has been murdered in the transfer to the screen ;). I have Water for Elephants and A Game of Thrones sitting on my shelf right now and I won’t be seeing either adaptations until I have read the books (I must stay strong, I MUST). I have done it the other way around and doing so has out me off reading the books, prime examples are PS I Love You, The Other Boleyn Girl and The Time Travellers Wife. I have the books sitting on my shelf but for some reason having seen the films just turn me off reading them…

How do you guys get along with spoilers or film versions of books?


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6 comments:

  1. I'm with you on the film adaptations ;)
    But as a general rule I write my reviews without getting all spoilery, unless of course it's humanly impossible to discuss the book without stating the glaringly obvious, sometimes it's just impossible to write a review without divulging all the deats, if that's the case than the audience has to be forewarned. How hard is it to write: This review contains spoilers? Nothing erks me more than having a book ruined for me because I've gone against all my better judgement that says "do not read that review"!!
    Anyway that's my blether, thanks for this awesome post! :)

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  2. Oh i'm all in for spoilers. I'm an addict. Not too much of the story though. That's not fun. Just enough to make me more excited, no matter if it's a book,movie,series...

    As for the movies from books. I try to read the book before seeing the movie. I guess it's a good thing the book adaptions are not that good in general because you can read the book after the movie too sometimes.

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  3. I'm only bothered by spoilers if I'm reading the book or about to read the book. If someone says something about a book I might get to in the future than I don't really care because by the time I read it I won't remember what they said.

    I actually like to watch movies of books first. Otherwise I hate the movie for butchering a good book.

    I do have to stand up for The Time Traveler's Wife and The Other Boleyn Girl. You have to read them! The movies were awful! Give the books a chance.

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  4. I usually like to read a book before I see a movie, however, I'm not always able to do that. My jaw dropped when you said you read the ending. I would NEVER do that! LOL. But I think you have a great point when you said "...there is a difference between knowing the ending and knowing how we got there..." However, I don't like ANY kind of spoilers, even if they may not relate to the plot.

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  5. I'm the kind of person who really likes to try figure out what is going to happen in the end as I'm reading, so I really hate spoilers. Unless I go looking for them, because I'm a hypocrite like that, lol - if I really can't figure it out, and I can't wait, I will sometimes go looking for someone to tell me. And it's for exactly that reason that I try very hard to make sure I read the book first - if I've seen the movie and know exactly what will happen, I'm likely to get bored with the slow bits in the book and just give up before I finish.

    As for what I do in my reviews, I try to be as spoiler free as possible. I want my reviews to be available to everyone, whether they like spoilers or not - if I feel like I need to spoil something then I'll white it out and they can choose whether to read it or not.

    Great post :)

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