Writer's Block: Spoilers Below the Cut

Have you ever ruined the ending or given away plot developments in a book, movie, or tv show by telling someone who hasn't seen or read it what happens? Has anyone ever done this to you? View other answers

Indeed I have, and have been! Most memorable of the former regards "Just Cause" (1995), starring Sean Connery and Lawrence Fishburne, where I in my effusive state blurted out a major plot twist (fortunately to an individual who didn't care, or at least so professed), and most recent to my recollection of the latter regards "Wall-E" (2008), which I still haven't seen.

As a rule, I avoid spoilers assiduously from both ends, regardless of the age of the work. I firmly believe I benefited greatly from seeing "The Sixth Sense" (1999) without knowing even the tagline, for example, and I would have been quite peeved if someone had blurted out the solution to the mystery in "The Woman in White" (1860) before I reached it. For other people, though, I generally do not voice any objections if the work is at least thirty years old.

(I'm still mad about the widespread disregard for this rule with respect to "The Sixth Sense", actually. I didn't suffer from it, but only because my mom sat me down and made me watch it before I had the chance.)

(By the way, if you get the DVD, after you've seen the movie, check out the alternate ending in the deleted scenes - it's worth seeing.)

Genre Book List

Saw this "genre fiction" (how I hate that term!) book list on hmmm_tea's journal - made a few inconsequential alterations to the rules myself...

1) Look at the list, copy and paste it into your own journal.
2) Marks: read one or all of, intend to read (or reread, or finish), loved, hated.
3) Feel free to elaborate wherever you like, whether on the books, the rules, or the list itself.

In no particular order:

( 100 items long, for whatever reason. Be warned. )

Obvious lacunae - Richard Adams (at least "Watership Down", and I'd add "Shardik"), Hal Clement ("Needle", "Mission of Gravity", but probably not "Still River", however much I love that book), Vernor freakin' Vinge ("A Fire Upon the Deep", I haven't read "A Deepness in the Sky", "True Names"), Edgar Allan Poe (anything, for cripe's sake), Bruce Sterling ("Islands in the Net", for one), Bram Stoker ("Dracula")...

Google Reader: Non!

As you probably do not know, I have recently been trying out Google Reader as a way of tracking my weblogs. (My "Shared Items" page.) What I have discovered, in the experiment, is that Google Reader acts like the ever-multiplying tabs in the more-slowly-multiplying Firefox windows that keep haunting me, only on speed.

So, back to "Morning Coffee". At least that way, I can say "eh" and ignore the huge pileup of old posts.