Skimming: Good or Bad?

I feel full of myself for even thinking that people remotely care about the random thoughts that I have to say, but anyway, I do, now let's move on.

Before we read anything, a book, a story, a fanfic, a newspaper article, or anything else that has words we want to know what we're getting into. There's absolutely no worse feeling in this world than investing your time in something only to eventually find out later it's not at all what you were looking for. It's frustrating, and it makes you feel like your time has been wasted; because lets face it, we have a finite amount of time and we want to make the most out of it.

So how do we figure out what we are reading is right for us?

We have plenty of tools at are disposal and for the most part we use them without a single thought behind them.

First and foremost we have the title. Titles are an interesting beast because they potentially give us more information than we realize if we know how to look. It gives us a set up, if we know how to look we can see style behind it. We can potentially see some of the authors style from their title. Is the title serious, is it tongue'n'cheek, is it sarcastic, is it funny? And that's just the main title. What about chapter titles, they tell us about the same thing, but we have more of them. Is there even a title for chapters or are they just a number?

Once the title has drawn us to pick up the book, or take a second look at the story we go right for the "summary" or really the little blurb. The short teaser that's only job is to hook you into the story. Does it really tell you what the book is about? Maybe, but more than likely it doesn't. It can't, if it told you everything about the story no one would read on.

So what then are we left with? Everyones favorite, but the one authors like the least. Skimming. Picking up the book and flipping through it reading a random here, or the chapter there. If it's online, maybe we pick a random chapter and read it, or maybe we read part of a few chapters. If for no other reason than to see if you like the style and the content. If you like it, you start from the beginning and enjoy the ride from start to finish. If you don't, you don't; you put it aside and you don't read it. No harm, no foul.

So why then do writers take such an offense to this practice? I've found it a lot with writers online in places like Fanfiction.net and fictionpress.net. Some authors there view the practice as insulting, because it means that the reader says that his/her time is more important than the writer. That simply isn't the case. I just said it: we all have finite amounts of time for leisure, and we hate wasting our time. So skim if you're unsure of something. Why not? Who cares?