Years ago, this blog featured something called “Battle of the Books.” It was sort of a March Madness competition bracket for 16 books. In the first round of our "Battle of the Books," the reviewer read the opening 25 pages of two books and then chose which of the books they most wanted to continue reading. It was sometimes like judging between apples and oranges. But we learned then that reading the starting 25 pages of a book can be surprisingly informative.
We're introducing a new feature on this blog called “Book Tasting” posts. These will be based on reading the first 25 pages of content of a book, which can include a prologue. We’ll write our personal opinions and thoughts about only those starting pages, without reading the back cover blurb which may give away details of the plot. We’ll ponder whether that small sample of the book sparked our interest in the book.
We acknowledge that a book is much more than its beginning 25 pages, so we can’t call a “book tasting” truly a book review. It takes more pages than that for a book to develop an interesting plot. Some excellent books start slowly. After reading only 25 pages, we’re unlikely to guess where a book will eventually take us.
A “Book Tasting” is a way for us to try out books that we have sitting unread on our to-be-read stacks and to share our first impressions of them.
