How to Choose a Novel

Tue Dec 11 08:03:37 CST 2007

http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,,1842639,00.html

How, then, to find the novels that you do have the time to invest in?
As the science-fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon (the original for Kurt
Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout) observed: "Ninety per cent of science
fiction is crap. But 90 per cent of everything is crap." How can we
identify the 10 per cent, or less, of fiction available that is not
crap?

[...]

Marshall McLuhan, the guru of The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), recommends
that the browser turn to page 69 of any book and read it. If you like
that page, buy the book. It works.