What's the best way to test a novel before you read it? from Books news, reviews and author interviews | guardian.co.uk by Robert McCrum

First line, last line, or Ford Madox Ford's p99 challenge? Actually, a good book should pass all of these. Ford Madox Ford is such an evergreen English writer. The Good Soldier is one of the most remarkable and influential novels of the 20th century. Currently FMF is back in the news for his dictum that you can judge any book by any one of its pages. What he actually said was: "Open the book to page 99 and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you." This lit crit nugget was first picked up in the USA by the punk rock band, Pg. 99, but it is now enjoying a vogue as an ideal way to cut through the blizzard of overproduction in books of all sorts. The p99 test does many things, but it also ruthlessly speeds up the selection process in a crowded marketplace. Some will say it's unfair, random and capricious, but I disagree. As readers we pay a lot of attention to (and love to quote) those striking first lines, for example: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

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