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DNSB · 12-29-2012, 01:19 AM

Mandatory to indicate the length of a book? Perhaps mandatory to include a reading difficulty scale. And a indication of the religious, political and whatever other beliefs of the author that someone somewhere thinks might be relevant to their personal happiness. Anytime I see the someone trying to justify their personal set of prejudices by saying make it mandatory, my BS detectors spring to attention.

Personally, I choose books based on prior experience with the author, previews (thanks, Baen!), recommendations by friends, etc (including some states of sheer boredom when I read anything with printing on it). I don't remember ever choosing a book based on it's length -- I need to read a book with 74,732 words by Tuesday, 7 PM. Would I have read Booth Tarkington's Penrod books, J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Tolstoy's War and Peace or Anna Karenina, etc. if I was strictly concerned with a belief that good books must have more than 70,119 words but less than 78,635?

Hmmm... I can see the laughter that result from my saying I chose Alice Walker's The Color Purple because it was only 66,556 words over Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five which had 49,459 words because of the word count. And forget War and Peace -- who wants to read 587,287 words? Or The Lord of the Rings at 473,217 words?

Regards,
David

12-29-2012, 01:19 AM	#31
DNSB Bibliophagist Posts: 45,266 Karma: 168808723 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Vancouver Device: Kobo Sage, Libra Colour, Lenovo M8 FHD, Paperwhite 4, Tolino epos	Deja bull time again Mandatory to indicate the length of a book? Perhaps mandatory to include a reading difficulty scale. And a indication of the religious, political and whatever other beliefs of the author that someone somewhere thinks might be relevant to their personal happiness. Anytime I see the someone trying to justify their personal set of prejudices by saying make it mandatory, my BS detectors spring to attention. Personally, I choose books based on prior experience with the author, previews (thanks, Baen!), recommendations by friends, etc (including some states of sheer boredom when I read anything with printing on it). I don't remember ever choosing a book based on it's length -- I need to read a book with 74,732 words by Tuesday, 7 PM. Would I have read Booth Tarkington's Penrod books, J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Tolstoy's War and Peace or Anna Karenina, etc. if I was strictly concerned with a belief that good books must have more than 70,119 words but less than 78,635? Hmmm... I can see the laughter that result from my saying I chose Alice Walker's The Color Purple because it was only 66,556 words over Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five which had 49,459 words because of the word count. And forget War and Peace -- who wants to read 587,287 words? Or The Lord of the Rings at 473,217 words? Regards, David Last edited by DNSB; 12-29-2012 at 01:49 AM. Reason: Corrected typo in total word counts.