We all have traumatic formative experiences as children. If you don’t mind me getting personal here, sharing my pain and showing my (metaphorical) scars, then…then I will.

(I can feel the love of all the Risky readers buoying me up, giving me courage to go on.)

When I was a kid, I… (Hard to say, for the misery, the shame.) I — I learned all the secrets of The Empire Strikes Back before I saw the movie. All of them.

I still haven’t recovered from that. (As you can see.)

It really hurt my enjoyment of the film, too, because I kept waiting for this to happen, and that to happen, and then for So-and-So to dramatically intone those terrible words (which I already knew)…

Around the same time, I found a copy of Diana Wynne Jones’s Charmed Life in a lovely little shop, on a lovely little day.

It had one of the prettiest covers I’d ever seen. It was paperback, so I could afford to buy it. And it was by one of my favorite authors!

I bought it. I loved it.

Tragically, this very pretty American paperback edition gave away a major secret on the back cover. This was a piece of information which was not known to the main characters until near the end of the book — but I didn’t realize they didn’t know it!

Ever since then, I’ve been spoiler-averse. I’m not on the extreme edge — I watch most previews in movie theaters, for example (though sometimes I close my eyes and ears and hum) — but if I know I’m going to read a book, I never read the blurb on the back…and when I’m watching television and a voice says “Next time, on Lost,” I turn it off, or hit the mute button and look away.

So…how about you?

Do you read the blurb on a book’s back-cover, or on the inner flap? Do you peek at the ending, to see if it ends happily?

Do you watch a TV show’s scenes from next time? Do you hide your eyes during movie previews?

Do you seek out spoilers online?

All answers welcome!

Cara
Cara King, author of MY LADY GAMESTER, which has a back cover that gives away some but not all of the plot