I pretty much never read the jacket copy until I’ve finished the book. It’s not so much about spoilers as it is about falling into a normative interpretation of the text.

If you keep a list on your phone of interesting-sounding authors and comb used book stores you’ll rarely run out of options.

The jacket copy for Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice is far and away the best I’ve ever read — not surprising that he wrote it himself.