Do You Peek at Endings?

Oh, I used to. All the time. When I'd come home from purchasing my newest read, I'd start the first few pages to get an idea of who was in the story. Then "oops," the book would flip over and what'd'ya know? The ending pages would be right there. In front of my face. My thumb just accidentally landed in the center of the page because, you know, I had to make sure the book didn't fall completely to the floor. An innocent blunder. (Hey, I had to say something to justify this guilty-slip). 

Since I was on the page anyway, I'd read a little of the ending. The last line. Maybe the last couple of paragraphs. If it was really good, or I was completely intrigued, I'd read the entire last page! Oh man, I cannot believe I owned up to that one. But no more than the last page. Honest. Why? I knew the book would have a happily ever after; I knew the hero and heroine would end up together, so none of these reasons could spoil the book. *sigh* I really don't know why I'd read the ending first. To this day, I don't.  A force of habit?

That was then. Now we are in the age of e-readers. Endings are not so accidentally come-upon anymore. Yes, you can slip to the end, but it takes a little more work and ingenuity to, say, let your fingers slip to the menu tab and accidentally tap the "go to" button and oops, I was mentally out-of-it when my fingers told the e-reader to jump to the last page of the book. 

See, not so get-away-able. At least, I've not been able to pull it off successfully yet. All told, I'm kinda glad, too. You see, the other day I pulled out a paperback romance I'd bought several months ago. I'd read perhaps a third of the book, happily turning page after page, when my old-habit fingers did their slip up and wham - I'm staring at the last page of the book. I struggled. Of course, like the proverbial cat, my curiosity got the better of me and I read. But only the last sentence. Good. *sigh* Then I read the sentence before that one. *ooh boy* My curiosity shoots up because I want to know what prompted this sentence, so I read the one before that. 

Aaaarrrggghhh!

I went too far!!

For the first time in my rather long reading life, I set the book down. I have absolutely no interest in reading the story any more and it saddens me because I had been enjoying the tale. What happened? That third-from-the-last-line did indeed tell me how the story ended, which I expected, but it also answered the question that had been teasing me throughout the story I'd read so far. In reading the ending, I found my answer and it killed my interest in the teasing clues. 

Is this the authors fault? Absolutely not. The blame is entirely my own. Now, if I had this story on one of my e-readers, I would have finished the story in its entirety. Oh well, I've learned my lesson. From now on, when I pick up a print book, I'll have to rubber band and staple and tape and otherwise weld the ending closed until I come to that conclusion in due course, by reading the book in it's proper order.

What about you? Do you peek at the endings and does this effect how you read the rest of the book? And if you have an e-reader, have you noticed a difference in your read-the-endings-first habit?

This is day two of the With Love Valentine's Day Blog Hop. Click on the button to go to the event site where you can scroll through all the authors participating. All comments to my blog during the days of the blog hop (with email addy's so I can notify you) will be put in a drawing for a fabulous prize of one PDF copy e-book of the winners choice from my back list and one KamaSutra EroStick in strawberry flavor from Lucy's Love Shop. Further details of the my contest are found by clicking here.

Thank you for visiting and don't forget to comment!!

Ayla