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Comment by blowski | Hacker News Reader

> 30 pages is enough.

By this definition, you could end up filling your life with airport thrillers. War and Peace has barely introduced a character by page 30, let alone got you hooked.

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I hope I am not seeing something in the essay that isn't there, but I don't think the 'hook' must be solely intra-textual a la new criticism/close reading. Part of the appeal of War and Peace or Brothers Karamazov is that it's a great book and an adventure to read. A mind prepared this way for an epic should be hooked on the world-building establishment in the early pages. It's still possible to decide it's not the right time to read a classic since the reader might not have the historical context or a large enough vocabulary or few enough distractions to get through dry but rewarding texts. The difference between classics and informational writing is that the classics should be put aside for later since there is no summary or conclusion that provides the useful takeaways, and the material is timeless.

I do totally agree. The characters are some of the most beautiful ever written, and I spent days and days in a hammock unable to tear myself away from it.

But if I judged the book after just 30 pages, I probably would have said that it was dry and boring with too many characters, and too little happening.

Ok. VERY good point! Hadn't though of that. Thanks!

Valid. But if the writer doesn't care about the reader to the point of wanting to make the idea stick by page 30, I choose not to continue reading. Of course this isn't a writer's problem per se, but there's just too many books and too little time to read everything. It's my way of having a filtering pattern without losing my mind.

It's a problem with 21st Century "instant gratification" culture. Like so much of life, many of the most rewarding books require effort to enjoy them, and get anything from them.

By requiring the author to do all the work, you're merely consuming culture. Becoming a culture-producer requires you to invest yourself in it, to think about it and respond to it. You cannot do that based on the first 30 pages alone. If you do, Dan Brown is probably the best author you'll ever read.

I don't want the first 30 pages to tell me everything. Nor should it be like that, it's just not healthy for the writer's imagination. But by then I should be hooked in any way, no?

To use your analogy of falling in love, the first 30 pages are like the first date. They can be beautiful, funny, and interesting, but after a while it can turn out that it was just a combination of good lighting, alcohol, and some overheard jokes. If you get on, then it's mostly lust at this stage anyway. It takes a lot more time together to know whether you're actually in love.

And if you don't click, maybe there's no point in meeting up again. But you have to question whether it's you or them. What are you looking for in a partner? Someone deep and meaningful with whom you can spend a lifetime, or a superficial one-night stand that you forget after a few days.

True, great analogy. But answering your question, I prefer the first of course. But you have a greater probability of finding your special someone if there's some initial chemistry, right? Again, the first date isn't everything. But first impressions matter a lot for what comes next.

To stretch this analogy beyond breaking point, of course you want some initial chemistry, but you need to ask what you're bringing to this relationship / reading.

Imagine you're friends hook you up on a blind date with someone described as "charismatic, supermodel looks, professorial brains". And you turn up, thinking "OK, Blind Date you have 30 minutes to impress me, or I'm outta here." That's what it's like picking up Tolstoy or Hugo and saying "if I'm not hooked after 30 pages, I'm just going to quit reading".

You need to bring something to the reading. Just as you expect Tolstoy to be interesting, so he expects you to be rather knowledgable about 19th Century European history, Christian philosophy, farming practices amongst serfs in Tsarist Russia. You can still fall in love with War and Peace without that knowledge (as I did), but it will take more effort from you and thus might take more than 30 pages.

And Tolstoy expects you to make, and to want to make, the effort to think about what he's writing. Dan Brown expects you to be time-pressed or naive - either unable or unwilling to challenge even his most basic assertions about history. So he writes for his audience, as Tolstoy writes for his. Tolstoy's motivations were closer to evangelism and pushing a political agenda. Dan Brown's are more about becoming rich.

And if all you are thinking while reading the book is "what am I getting from this?" then you're never going to enjoy it as you otherwise might. I read Crime and Punishment because I picked up quickly as I left the house for the airport. Stuck on a plane with nothing else to do, I slogged through the opening section, trying to cope with weird names and an alien culture. But that book, caused me to get into lots of other Russian literature, become Christian, and ultimately inspired some of the conversations that lead me to marrying my wife. I doubt anyone can say that about a Stig Larsson or James Patterson pageturner.

Ok, it's a very good argument. Of course we as readers also have to add something, and our background is important; the more we open our minds I believe the better our criteria of interestingness will be. Today I read stuff 3 years ago I would have no patience to read, it's also an exercise in which you evolve. But you're using an example of a classic while I tried to focus on online articles and other contemporary books, in an era where there's always another stimulum. I say in response to this we must make choices, and "what am I getting from this?" is the way I found to help filter all this information. I'm glad it's not a fixed set of rules, because as your story exemplifies exceptions make much better stories.

Still regarding choices: Dan Brown sure can hook us in the first 30 pages, but we are the ones who choose if we want to read Dan Brown in the first place. It's yet another layer of discussion to add to this.

PS: I'm glad this subject isn't dead and dry and sparks such discussion. Wasn't expecting this at all.

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