I quite enjoyed posting the second paragraph of the third chapter (C3p2 for short) of each book I read in March as a one-month project, but I don’t think I will continue the practice. I am tardy enough at writing up books and audios in timely fashion as I get through them (it’s now 12 April, I’ve finished 9 books so far this month, and haven’t posted about any of them yet), and adding an extra step in the process doesn’t seem all that wise.
However, it was interesting to see that, in the majority of cases, the C3p2 was a really good taster for what the rest of the book would be like. My favourite was probably Animal Farm, but there were lots of other good examples too. It comes out as a fair point of comparison, or a possibly useful yardstick while browsing and thinking if you want to get stuck in.
The exceptions, oddly enough, were the Doctor Who books. Hardly any of them had a good C3p2, or one which really gave a flavour of the rest of the book. (The game books did have C3p2’s which gave an indicative flavour, but they were all pretty bad books.) Perhaps the traditional pacing of Who books is such that Chapter 3 doesn’t always signpost the rest of the story terribly well.
Anyway, it was interesting to try this. Thanks,