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Old 01-31-2019, 02:23 PM   #10
sun surfer
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Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: smiling with the rising sun
Device: onyx boox poke 2 colour, kindle voyage
I prefer the ebook to open at the first page that the author intended for the book. That would include the epigraph and any forward by the author specifically meant to be read before the main book content regardless of edition of the book (i.e. basically part of the book content itself). The closest to that was choosing 'epigraph'.

Otherwise, I prefer to start at the cover, but sometimes that's annoying when there is too much information or too many pages between the cover and the actual start of the main content, especially when there aren't good links in the ebook. So all things considered I'd prefer the default opening to a book to be the epigraph/beginning of the author's content. The only exception is that this should include non-spoilery translator's notes as well.

I consider all that as the 'main' content and separate it from preamble content such as introductions and most forwards because I hate that most of them are full of spoilers and would prefer all content like that to be afterwards but unfortunately the world isn't built around me. I wouldn't mind reading them first if it's a re-reading and already know the story, but there is so much I want to read that I've never read that it's very rare I re-read.

All this also touches on a huge pet peeve of mine as well. When you want to preview a book, such as at Goodreads or Amazon or wherever, they usually only give you a short excerpt to preview. All too often, this preview begins with the introduction of a book and so the actual preview of the main content is cut, and often the introduction is so long that the entire preview is of introductory materials. It's really ridiculous.
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