Merle8888 t1_j9c8jux wrote on February 20, 2023 at 9:29 PM

Depends on length, whether written by the author or an academic, and the purpose for which they were written. Those long academic essays at the beginnings of classics, absolutely not, they’re often pretentious and irrelevant and also spoil things I’d rather discover organically. A short piece by the author at the beginning, yeah I’ll read that first because that’s as the author intended.

BadIdeasDrawnPoorly OP t1_j9egba2 wrote on February 21, 2023 at 9:14 AM

Yeah, I've not really come across many academic ones, but I feel like I'd give them a miss. If ots by the Author they're normally quite interesting.