Discussion | Judging Books Before You Read Them

Hello everyone! Hope you’re all having a good weekend. I thought I’d do a discussion post today based on pre-judging books before you’ve read them. I’m guessing we’re all slightly guilty of this one! My post is going to be about all the different ways we could judge a book before reading it and whether it’s a good or bad thing. I hope you enjoy the discussion and I’d love to hear what your opinions are in the comments below – enjoy!

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Ok, so we pre-judge a lot of things in life in general – but would us book-lovers really pre-judge books? I think that the answer is yes, so I decided to do a post on just a few of the different ways in which we could pre-judge books. So are you ready to admit to some bad bookish habits?!

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The Length of a Book

Go on – admit it! Have you ever been put off by the length of a book? There are some really long books out there now and I personally, just think that stuff like A Game of Thrones and the later Harry Potter books are so long, and I find it quite daunting really, picking up a book like that. I question if I will have the will-power to finish it and am put of by the fact that if I don’t it will have felt like a waste of time. But then I also think that people might be put off by shorter books too, guessing that they will be brief, maybe episodic and uneventful.

But of course, the length of a book shouldn’t be important. I get really attached to most books I read and I’m always wishing that they were 100+ pages longer, ahaha, so yeah, maybe length shouldn’t be such a big thing. However, I can empathize with readers who are discouraged by a very thick book because it can turn into a bit of a chore, rather than pleasure, ploughing through a book if it’s like twice the size of an average book.

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The Cover of a Book

Despite the old saying: “Never judge a book by it’s cover”, we all love our book covers, and if it doesn’t look great, well, you’re not really going to feel compelled to pick it up and read more about it, are you, let alone buy it? There are some great covers out there, so I think it’s quite important to have a striking cover for a book – a cover is what draws you in and attracts you to the book, so it’s important that it’s good and sets the scene for the book.

On the other hand, can you really safely judge whether to buy a book or not based on the cover? My reply would be that no, you can’t. You see some great covers, but the quality of the cover doesn’t necessarily correlate with the quality of the book itself. But yeah, I would say that a cover is what originally draws you in, so it is quite important! 🙂

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Issues the book deals with

Books deal with some touchy subjects nowadays, such as suicide, disability, illnesses, sexualities, etc, so if you saw that a book was going to be based around a certain subject like this that you thought might be uncomfortable or depressing to read about, you might be put off by it, however I’ve read some great books recently based on subjects that I’ve imagined I might not enjoy reading about.

A prime example for me is Me Before You by Jojo Moyes – a book about a man with a disability. I thought that it might just be really depressing and everything, however it was a very light-hearted and happy book, which was very refreshing to see.

I think it’s good to be open to subjects to read about and very open-minded, otherwise, you are limiting yourself, and missing out on some great reads!

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 Hyped up Books

There are so many hyped up books nowadays, it would be easy just to base your reading list off what other people are enjoying, but you shouldn’t be put off picking up a book that you haven’t heard much about. There are some fabulous books out there, that haven’t been given their due credit yet.

I mean, it’s absolutely fine to follow trends as we established in my last discussion post: Do you Follow Bookish Trends , but it’s obviously important to remember that not all the best books are the ones everyone’s talking about. So I would say it’s important to not judge books on whether they are up there in other people’s ‘favourites lists’. Each have their own tastes after all!

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I’m Guilty of Quite a Few!

Well – them all really, to a certain extent, haha!  I’m a big lover of beautiful front covers – there’s something very special about carrying around a book with a lovely front cover – especially if it’s a great book as well!

My ideal page-count for a book is around the 350-450 mark, otherwise it’s either over too fast, or too dragged out for my liking – I’m so fussy!

I’m not really put off by subjects that books deal with, especially now I’ve discovered some really good ones dealing with issues I wouldn’t have once felt comfortable reading about, but no, now I am very open-minded, to be honest.

And, yeah, I am curious when it comes to hyped up books, but I don’t mind giving lesser well known books a try too!

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How About You?

• Do you sometimes find yourself pre-judging books?
• Can you think of any other ways in which you could pre-judge a book?
• Can you think of a time when you pre-judged a book and were proven wrong?
• Did you enjoy this discussion topic?
• Did you agree with the examples I raised?

Let me know what you think in the comments below!

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Hope you enjoyed this Discussion!

Thank you very much for reading, everyone!