When reading another topic regarding a book with slow start some users noted that they plowed through it because of the author. Now I started thinking how common it is actually for people to call off a book if the first chapter(s) aren’t full of action and excitement, presuming the whole book is potentially as blatant? In agenting and publishing this apparently is a major factor and if the first paragraphs or a chapter do not appear lucrative, the whole story gets ditched.
However at least I seldom judge a book by it’s beginning. If the premise is interesting or the blurb is promising, the author is known to be good, or most often in my case, searching it online and reading synopsis and reviews that come out as positive, I will most definitely take the first chapters as potentially boring establishment to a story.
I like to go in as blind as possible. This way, expectations are not a factor, and I can judge it based on what I think, not what others have said.
One of the things I’ve found is that first chapters, by their very need to hook a reader, are often not representative of the overall quality of a novel (barring classics, of course). The opening usually gets much more authorial and editorial attention than the sagging middle. So I open a book to the middle somewhere. Is the prose badly written? Is the dialogue ridiculous? That’s often a deciding factor for me.