Marshal Macluhan, the coiner of misunderstood concepts such as “the medium is the message” and the “global village” apparently had an interesting way of deciding whether or not to buy, borrow, read or ignore a book he recommended people to turn to page 69 of any book and read it. If you like that page, buy the book. Cool idea.
Naturally even this idea has been abused and there is now a blog entitled The Page 69 Test which helps readers try to find books worth reading. Unfortunately my problem is that I have too many books which I want or need to read. But I will be trying the page 69 system.