lolabobs | (no subject)

I has a puppy and a suicidal bunny! Thank you

elfinessy

I also has significantly less chocolates than I started the weekend with, but I won't tell if you won't.

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I was talking on Wednesday with a friend about reading - and he said that he always read the ending of books before he started reading them, as he couldn't cope emotionally if there was an unhappy ending. He did this always, and, if reading a series of books and one he reads has an unhapy event he skips the next book(s) in the series - as an example: a character's partner died in one series, he missed out the next two published books until he thought it would be safe to read another.

This boggled me - I can understand people liking spoilers, and I know when my Mum read Mills and Boon she would read the last chapter to see how sappy it was (which we as a family welcomed as it limited the amount of times a book went flying across the front room when she became exasperated!), I just find it hard to imagine being so vulnerable that you can't cope with a less than blissful happy ending.

For me, part of reading a book for the first time is that whole 'not knowing what's going to happen' the tense anxiety or anticipation, the 'I can't put the book down till I know ' experience. And while I will reread a book over and over, I want that first time experience unsullied!

What do other people think? Do? Like I said, I can understand the 'tease' of spoilers and anticipating how they will appear/play out, but to know the ending fully? I'm genuinely interested in your thoughts.

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If you look up some of the ebook romance or erotica publishers, you'll see that many of them require a happily ever after ending or at least a happily for now ending from their authors (you can see this by looking at their submissions requirements). So you can imagine readers of current romance, at least, apparently pretty strongly want happy endings.
Personally, I don't like knowing how a book ends, but I HAVE found over the last few years I'm having a tougher time dealing with endings that unexpectedly leave me feeling sort of, well, grieving. There's an SPN fan fiction, one that's over 100,000 words, and the authors didn't warn at all for the ending (not that I expect it or anything, but I do know in SPN fandom a lot of authors give fairly specific warnings for stuff), which was WAY less than happy, and in fact near the end you think everything is going to end fine just before it all goes completely and utterly to shit. It took me days to stop thinking about it and really, just being very upset by it. I don't think the author owed me anything different, but I do felt the shock of the ending was an intentional thing on the authors' part.
Lately I read Suzanne Collins YA series and was very anxious about the ending as I got closer to it. It was all I could do not to check the end of the final book, just to be sure I wouldn't be crying in my beer:)
Still don't normally check, though - I do prefer the anticipation and normally really dislike having the ending disclosed to me beforehand. I just seem to be getting more sensitive.

There are certain expectations from certain types of books I suppose, I would always expect a romance book to have a happily ever after ending, and I expect crime novels to have an ending - not necessarily a good one, I expect characters to be vulnerable and know they might be killed off, I can even tolerate the killer getting away with it, but I expect an ending of sorts - I've been very annoyed lately with a couple of books that just stopped, clearly with some expectation of a sequel, but no ending or resolution. Grr.

I think I may know the SPN fiction, I think it's one I sat up all night reading!

I can understand the urge to peek, just to find out, similar to Christmas presents really, I can look at the box and imagine peeling back a little bit of paper and so on, but never ever ever do, 'cos I want the experience of opening it - and it's just the same with my books!