I’ve decided that in the future all academic book reviews should add a common courtesy. When I’m about to read the summary of a film or a novel, those that give away crucial plot twists will dutifully declare, *Spoiler Alert!*
Academics, however, have not typically been so thoughtful.
I therefore call upon all of you, my comrades in the guild, to elevate the thoughtfulness of our discourse. If you give away the punchline of a book in your book review, please indicate this at the very beginning by using the phrase, “Spoiler Alert,” preferably well placed to draw attention to itself before someone gets too far into their skimming.
This would be very helpful for those of us who, without having read the spoiling review, would have been on the edge of our seats, gripped with curiousity, obsessively reading, wondering how it was going to end.
Exactly! How often to do we deprive our colleagues of that joy? We’ve been such a thoughtless bunch.
So do you read every academic book twice? I mean, so you can notice “how the ending of the [argument] transforms the rest“? (Honest question: Do you read once through to be surprised, and then go back to examine the connections?)
Side question: I wonder if the lack of spoiler courtesy you’ve just pointed out means that most of us want to be spoiled, so we only have to read once.
No, Bill, I don’t read through once to be surprised when I read academic books. I care about that in a novel, but not here. This was entirely tongue in cheek.
I do sometimes reread academic books to see how everything fits together and often this is a valuable exercise. Some I keep coming back to over and over and am increasingly impressed by what writers have done. Some, not so much…
Oops. Well, for what it’s worth, I found myself wondering if that actually would be a better way to read some people’s arguments. “Some”, as you say.
I don’t often do it, myself. A non-fiction book has to be reeeeaaaaly good for me to NOT skip ahead after chapter one, and I usually jump straight to the end.
But Dale Alison’s Historical Christ/Theological Jesus was that way for me. I enjoyed being carried along by that one. It’s a rarity, though.
You’re not supposed to read academic books past page 40. Everybody knows that!
Having said that, that’s one of the reasons Hunter’s book To Change the World fails as an academic publication: you have to read to the end to get his argument.
(Actually, most of the books that had the greatest influence on my thinking were ones that I finished.)