I usually skip them. Sometimes they even spoil the book. But their existence doesn’t bother me in the least.

Well, the one Lonesome Dove spoiled the entire damn book. ☹️

I skip them. They are cherry-picked and pointless. I don’t care what some person picked by the publisher thinks about the book.

A lot of times they have spoilers, especially for classics. I have been burned too many times by this. Now I’ll read the book first, and if it made an impression I’ll see what the intro has to say.

It depends. On quick inspection if it seems dry or a deep analysis put it off til after the novel. I’m not that worried about spoilers per se, the basic plot of most fiction reprinted with a foreword isn’t exactly a secret, but I’d like my initial impressions to be natural as possible.

While on the subject…Nabokov famously hid the final fate of a few characters in “Lolita” in that book’s fake ‘Foreword’; any reader skipping over the section missed out on a very important plot point.

This little joke of his only works because even in the 1950s readers rushed past the introductory parts on the way to the good stuff. The urge to skip ahead puts you in good company.