Eat your vegs
December 8, 2014 12:25 PM   Subscribe

POINT: To drop a novel after a few chapters is, then, to disregard what makes it a formal work of art rather than a heap of papers that reside in a desk drawer. Today, books and authors need all the help they can get; if you care about literature as an artistic endeavor and the people who create it, then you should do so fully. If you consider yourself a literary person, you shouldn't just embrace the intellectual cachet that starting books gives you. Starting, but not finishing, books is one step above saying, "Oh yeah, I've heard of that author."

COUNTERPOINT: So if we are considering whether or not it “hurts literature” for us to finish or not finish books, we can mark this down as a “hurting literature” moment. Because if Nabokov is a super important author that we should read…I am not going to read him. Forcing myself to finish the book cost me that.
Juliet Lapidos says you should finish every book you start. Peter Damien disagrees.
posted by MartinWisse (236 comments total) 29 users marked this as a favorite
 
Life Is Too Short to read books just because "informed opinion" says they're important.

Read 'em if you want to, folks. Ignore them if you aren't interested. The books don't care. And fiction is an art form, not a self-improvement discipline.
posted by cstross at 12:28 PM on December 8, 2014 [77 favorites]


Someone has never picked up the Bible
posted by Dmenet at 12:30 PM on December 8, 2014 [9 favorites]


Now, the question of whether you should read every book you buy-
posted by Iridic at 12:33 PM on December 8, 2014 [8 favorites]


Honestly it takes a lot to get me to finish a book, there's too much out there to put up with less.
posted by The Whelk at 12:34 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


When asked why he has such a reputation as a nice guy in the SF industry, Gene Wolfe said (paraphrasing) "I have no compulsion to finish a book that I'm not enjoying. So when people ask my opinion of their book, I can always honestly say either that I liked it or that I haven't read it."

The deal is that you're allowed to quit a book anytime you want, but you have to admit you haven't read it.
posted by straight at 12:34 PM on December 8, 2014 [48 favorites]


I used to feel pretty militant about finishing every book I picked up and then somebody gave me a copy of "Tuesdays With Morrie" and now I'll stop reading a book just for the hell of it.
posted by saladin at 12:36 PM on December 8, 2014 [13 favorites]


I'm a writer, and I make no apologies for putting aside books that don't do it for me. Moreover, I don't want people to force their way through my book if it isn't worth it to them.

Literature suffers when people read books that bore them out of obligation. Literature suffers when only modernist and post-modernist realism is considered "literary". Literature suffers when children stop reading for pleasure as a result of their experiences in school.

Forcing your way through a book you don't enjoy isn't going to solve any of the aforementioned problems.
posted by starbreaker at 12:36 PM on December 8, 2014 [13 favorites]


If you consider yourself a literary person, you shouldn't just embrace the intellectual cachet that starting books gives you.

Um, I consider myself a literary person because I enjoy a great many books (I was an English major because I really, really like reading books and talking to people about them), not because I want to "embrace the intellectual cachet" of being a literary person. Jesus.

I also used to feel a complete compulsion to finish every book I started no matter how much I wasn't enjoying it. Then I got mismedicated for my bipolar and I couldn't even start books or watch TV or listen to the radio or sit still or do ANYTHING! Then I got medicated properly and the whole world got better and it was like I had woken up to remember how much I love reading and so I spend a lot of time reading books I like and giving myself permission to quit reading them if I'm not enjoying them. How much time I devote to reading books I either do or don't like is an oddly important barometer of my mental health.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 12:36 PM on December 8, 2014 [6 favorites]


I'm tempted to say I didn't finish Juliet Lapidos' article...
There was a time when I finished every book I started, and then I realized I was robbing myself of the chance to read other things I liked better.
posted by librosegretti at 12:39 PM on December 8, 2014 [14 favorites]


First: Pleasure. When you stop short, you risk missing something incredible.
Well, sure, but I have a limited lifespan and limited time in the day for reading, and if I finish reading a book I don't like, that means that I'll have less time to start another book that I might like. It seems like that's at best a wash, right?

Honestly, if the price of considering myself a "literary person" is that I have to pay attention to a lot of sanctimonious killjoys with rules about reading, then I'm fine just being a person who likes to read. I'm actually not sure what a "literary person" is anyway.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:39 PM on December 8, 2014 [15 favorites]


Oh, yes, I talked to Literature on the phone the other day and it was indeed very hurt that I had not yet finished either Dhalgren OR In Search of Lost Time, and I haven't even started that copy of Lord of the Rings in French that I picked up in 2008. I had to apologize and promise that I would continue with the Pat Barker novel I'd put down after the child rape.

And the publishers! They too publish based on what people finish, not what people buy. And authors only get the last part of their payment when you click "finished" on LibraryThing.

~~~

Idly...is one obliged to finish a series? So that having read the first two of the Pat Barker WWI books, I am obliged to read the third? Surely it's as important to finish the series if one is looking for rewards, authorial intent, etc? Or maybe one should read all of an author's work? I mean, is it really possible to understand, say, Samuel Delany as a writer if you don't start with the pulps and finish up with Through The Valley Of The Nest Of Spiders, not omitting the porn, letters or ephemera? What I say is, if you're not in it for completism, don't even start, right?

And what's more, I suggest reading books you actively think you won't like - is it racist? Homophobic? Grossly misogynistic? Written by an abusive asshole? Well, how do you know that rich rewards aren't waiting for you in the last chapter? They're probably there, just like when you force yourself to do stairmaster at the gym precisely because you hate stairmaster.

Or how about fields you're not interested in? Perhaps you tried to study biology but decided that it wasn't for you - what's up with that? You're hurting education!
posted by Frowner at 12:39 PM on December 8, 2014 [25 favorites]


..and I was young and poor and needed the literature.
posted by librosegretti at 12:39 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


I had woken up to remember how much I love reading and so I spend a lot of time reading books I like and giving myself permission to quit reading them if I'm not enjoying them.

What I wouldn't give to have been married to that Mrs. Pterodactyl during your hate-reading Dan Brown period of 2005-2006.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 12:40 PM on December 8, 2014 [10 favorites]


Today, books and authors need all the help they can get

Books and authors would then probably be happier if I bought two 500 page books and read 250 pages of each.

I find this hard to take seriously, I don't enter into any moral obligation to a book I start. His arguments about building character or whatever are extensible to never quitting anything.
posted by pseudonick at 12:41 PM on December 8, 2014 [5 favorites]


It feels pretty stupid to commit yourself to another four or five hours of reading a book you are flat out not enjoying. You also don't have to clean your plate every meal, make every dish from scratch, or finish that beer. Maybe it's wasteful, but you aren't obligated to suffer for the sake of completion.

(In fact, in the examples I gave, sometimes completing something only because it's there may be harmful. Sometimes realizing it's time to quit is valuable.)
posted by maryr at 12:42 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


Best here to quote Sturgeon's Law, after Theodore Sturgeon: "ninety percent of everything is crap." I suspect he's not just talking about pulpy, mass-appeal type books, but at least some of that 90% are the books you're "supposed" to read.

Also, this is a nice graphic showing the disdain that famous authors had for other famous authors' work. (warning: Flash, HuffPost)
posted by zardoz at 12:42 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


I wish I could find the quote from a female sci-fi author about not finishing books and not feeling guilty about reading the last page without reading the middle. I thought it was Margaret Atwood, but I can't seem to dig it up. I heard it a couple years ago and it was revelatory for me.
posted by klangklangston at 12:42 PM on December 8, 2014


Somehow it's deeply annoying to me when people say "book" when they clearly mean "novel."

I have about two dozen books that I'll spend my whole life working on. All the rest are enjoyable, sometimes even important, but it's okay if I don't finish them. As long as I can understand something important about those two dozen, I'll know I took this whole thing seriously, and I'll be happy.

But then again, almost none of those two dozen are novels.
posted by koeselitz at 12:42 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


Dan Brown is eminently hate-readable. Angels & Demons is a real rage-turner. I could barely hurl it down!
posted by theodolite at 12:43 PM on December 8, 2014 [45 favorites]


The one rule I do make for myself: When reviewing a book (or an album) or what have you, I require myself to make it all the way through. I think that if I'm going to write something about a work, I have the obligation to make it all the way through. Hell, I try to read things I post as FPPs all the way through before sharing them, and that's a lower bar than putting me real name next to a publication.
posted by klangklangston at 12:44 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


And [Good] fiction is an art form, not [and] a self-improvement discipline.
FIFY :)
posted by resurrexit at 12:45 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


What I wouldn't give to have been married to that Mrs. Pterodactyl during your hate-reading Dan Brown period of 2005-2006.

Oh God, that was terrible. I found Angels and Demons so horribly offensive (largely for its treatment of the Middle Eastern character who had a thing for subjugating blond women. Yes really.) and also so unbelievably terrible that after I read it and destroyed my copy by throwing it across the room I PURCHASED ANOTHER COPY TO HATE READ AGAIN because I couldn't believe it was actually as bad as I remembered. I believe, though I could be wrong, that this happened twice and I have bought three copies of that fucking book.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 12:45 PM on December 8, 2014 [12 favorites]


I'd sooner give myself a splenectomy with a grapefruit spoon while listening to the Ray Coniff and The Singers cover All Along The Watchtower. Life is too short, man.
posted by Mary Ellen Carter at 12:45 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


I used to finish (almost) every novel I started, and felt immensely guilty about the ones I didn't finish. Then I got to Mrs. Dalloway's leaden circles dissolving in the air and decided it was obvious where it was going and I didn't really care.

Reading shouldn't bore you; it should entertain you, engage you, possibly bring you joy, but certainly make you feel that it's worth the time you spent doing it.
posted by johnofjack at 12:45 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


Mrs. Pterodactyl, STOP THAT! Buying more Dan Brown books hurts us all.
posted by maryr at 12:46 PM on December 8, 2014 [9 favorites]


I am a pretty dedicated book-finisher myself -- it has to be painfully, tediously bad but not AMUSINGLY painfully bad for me not to finish -- but it drives me crazy when people act like there's a moral component to finishing books. There's not. People need to relax.

Now, I think there is a point to giving a fair try to widely-considered-great literature that doesn't quite suit you -- there's a value in that. Sometimes it surprises you. But I don't think there's a value in driving yourself onwards with scourgings and hatred when you really just want to STOOOOOP.

However, these people who say, "Oh, yes, I read that!" when they've only just started it and cast it aside, in order to appear more literary? This is the far more interesting, buried point in this article, that the author is apparently friendly primarily with pretentious peacocks whose lives consist of trying to appear more than they are, which raises interesting questions about "being literary" as aren't novels and literature supposed to make you more emotionally aware and honest? Get different friends, dude. Nobody ever became a social outcast for saying, "I started it, but it wasn't really for me."
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:46 PM on December 8, 2014 [5 favorites]


It was a joyous day of liberation when I realized if I wasn't enjoying a book I could just stop reading it. Chains, begone! My life is short, and I owe you nothing, authors. Nothing!
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 12:46 PM on December 8, 2014 [8 favorites]


A book is done when I say it is done. Whether that is page 51 or page 874.
posted by Buttons Bellbottom at 12:47 PM on December 8, 2014 [10 favorites]


The happy situation I find myself in these days is that there are so many great novels and books of poetry being published, with a little internet review-reading and ratings/recommendations research, I rarely find myself starting a book that I don't enjoy a great deal. I love to read and I feel very fortunate in this.
posted by aught at 12:48 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


as if Literature is a Fairy that will drop dead somewhere if someone says they don’t believe in it

Ha, I love that. The original line about how not finishing a book means you don't care about literature is ridiculous. I agree with the second essay even though his choice of example is frickin' killing me over here. Lolita?! How could you? Why? What?! How? AUGH! But "maybe me and this book aren't syncing up quite yet" is a perfect way of putting it, I think. You bring your own self to a book--your past, your history, what you've been thinking about lately, your current life stage--and sometimes a book, no matter how great, is just not speaking to you at that moment and sometimes the stars align and it's magic.

Lately the only times I force myself to finish a book are for my book club. The two books I finished that I would not have finished otherwise were The Buddha in the Attic (yes, it's like 90 pages long, I hated it THAT much) and The Valley of Amazement (Amy Tan's latest). I was glad I finished Buddha because the book club was very torn on that book--half of us liked it and half of us loathed it--and the discussion was very lively and insightful. Even that group couldn't save Amy Tan from being completely meh, though, and I kind of do regret wasting the time on that one. Gabriel Garcia Marquez died when I was like two chapters from finishing and I just went into a fit of "life is too SHORT" and almost threw it down to reread One Hundred Years of Solitude. It wasn't a choice between the two, and I reread Solitude after I was finished, but if it had been, I think choosing Amy Tan over Gabriel Garcia Marquez would be spitting in the face of Literature.
posted by sunset in snow country at 12:49 PM on December 8, 2014


Yeah, for the first time in my (not exactly long) record of commenting on MetaFilter, I feel perfectly comfortable commenting without RTFA: Nope. Ars longa, vita brevis, and seriously, you really can't always tell about a book from its cover. I will always say "I haven't finished that," when the book comes up, but I will never force myself to finish another book.

And this was a realization that I had to explicitly come to in my late twenties, so I've had enough self-guilt-trip for-no-obvious-reason book finishings under my belt.
posted by seyirci at 12:49 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


> If you consider yourself a literary person, you shouldn't just embrace the intellectual cachet that starting books gives you. If you consider yourself a literary person, you shouldn't just embrace the intellectual cachet that starting books gives you.

I'm pretty sure that if I met this woman at a party, I'd end the conversation before she was finished.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:50 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


But I need half-read books to lay (face down, open) on top of other half-read books to keep them warm.
posted by fleacircus at 12:50 PM on December 8, 2014 [16 favorites]


tl;dr
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 12:51 PM on December 8, 2014 [11 favorites]


Nah. Not finishing a book is pretty much like walking out of/turning off a movie that just doesn't click with you. There's no shame in not finishing a book. We all have tastes in the art we consume. At least you tried reading the book. That's a lot better than simply never reading at all.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:53 PM on December 8, 2014


I finish every book I start, because I care about literature. I finish many of them after only a few pages, because I care about literature an an art form.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 12:54 PM on December 8, 2014 [11 favorites]


First: Pleasure. When you stop short, you risk missing something incredible.

This is like when people talk about certain video games. "Oh sure the first 20 hours are terrible, but the last 50 are awesome!"
posted by kmz at 12:55 PM on December 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


There was one glorious day in about 2009 when I sold all my Derrida. Writing and Difference! Of Grammatology! Specters of Marx! Limited Inc! And that big book of interviews I'd try whenever I had a long bus trip. All, all went down to the shop and I came back with something like ten dollars. Which I assume I spent on science fiction and soda pop.

I expect that some day I'll work back around to wanting to read some Derrida, and indeed, I was just thinking that it would be kind of neat to look at Archive Fever, but the day when I realized that I did not have to read Derrida, that was a great day in the morning.
posted by Frowner at 12:56 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


@Frowner, I said, "Screw this," after reading the first four books of The Wheel of Time. I figured Robert Jordan would get over it. I was wrong. Poor bastard dropped dead before his series was done. :)
posted by starbreaker at 12:56 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


What is it with these Literary types always telling people they're doing it wrong?

"Don't read SF. Don't read fantasy. Don't read ebooks. Don't read YA. Don't not read the whole thing."

How about encouraging people to read instead?
posted by Foosnark at 12:57 PM on December 8, 2014 [9 favorites]


Feeling free to abandon books you're not enjoying gives you the opportunity to be more adventurous when choosing books to read. Go the library, grab something that looks even a little bit interesting. If you like it, great! If you don't, throw it back. You can find some really interesting books this way.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 1:00 PM on December 8, 2014 [8 favorites]


There are so many great books out there. I can't understand wasting your time on one that's not doing it for you. I felt pretty liberated when I put down Pride and Prejudice for the second and last time and realized it was okay, I was still a book lover/literary type person despite that.
posted by ferret branca at 1:00 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


When it comes to questions of how and what to read, one can always rely on the avuncular voice of Italo Calvino: "If there is no spark, the exercise is pointless: it is no use reading classics out of a sense of duty or respect, we should only read them for love."
posted by Lorin at 1:02 PM on December 8, 2014 [16 favorites]


I didn't even finish reading the post.
posted by w0mbat at 1:03 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


...Stanford marshmallow experiment from the late 1960s, which found, in brief, that children who were able to wait longer before stuffing themselves tended to do better in school and have a healthier body mass index...

Third: Respect. As any agent will tell you...


Ah, an insipid argument from The Atlantic! I'll link to this and this again. Srsly, The Pickwick Papers is your marquee case for always reading to completion? The fucking Pickwick Papers!?!
posted by batfish at 1:03 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


First: Pleasure. When you stop short, you risk missing something incredible.

Any time you choose a book to read, you are choosing NOT to use that time to read lots of other books, and therefore you risk missing something incredible. One could also question whether fear of missing out is a good reason to do things, or to keep doing things.

The argument that one can determine what is trash and what is not by reading book reviews or asking friends assumes that everyone has the same definition of what is and isn't trash. I think it's fairly obvious that no such universal standard exists.
posted by Anne Neville at 1:04 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


Literary Fiction Spoilers: Having an "ending" snacks a bit of having a plot and other genre trash trappings.
posted by Artw at 1:05 PM on December 8, 2014 [5 favorites]


This is like when people talk about certain video games. "Oh sure the first 20 hours are terrible, but the last 50 are awesome!"

See also TV shows. No, sorry, I am not going to wade through 4-10 hours of crapola because it might get interesting to me later on. Nope. Then again, I mostly hate TV shows.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 1:05 PM on December 8, 2014 [5 favorites]


I'm currently about a third of a way through The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, and I'm tempted to stop right here because everything is great! All the characters are happy! And I suspect it's not going to stay that way for the rest of the book.

But anyway: what counts as "starting" a book, for those insane people who think they have to join the clean page club? Reading the first line? The first chapter? What's the point of no return?
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:05 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


I expect that some day I'll work back around to wanting to read some Derrida,

If you're in the right frame of mind (which I was during grad school 25 years ago) Derrida is honestly a lot of fun to read. I imagine most people will refuse to believe that because he's French and a literary/cultural theorist (see, even as I was typing that last phrase, 218 MeFites skipped ahead to reading the next comment) but I found it, to my surprise, to be true.
posted by aught at 1:06 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


> I felt pretty liberated when I put down Pride and Prejudice for the second and last time and realized it was okay, I was still a book lover/literary type person despite that.

Shhhhhhh! You don't want to get kicked out of the Literary Person Club, do you?
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:07 PM on December 8, 2014


What's the point of no return?

Well, you shouldn't even have glanced at that book bound in a human face.
posted by Artw at 1:07 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


Until I was 24 years old, I finished every novel I started. Then I got about 650 pages into Clive Barker's Imajica, waiting and waiting for this gigantic doorstop of arcane bullshit to interest me. And feeling like I was so close to the end that I had to finish it. And I hated it and hated it. Finally I threw it across the room, with fewer than 200 pages to go. And freed myself to never force myself to finish a book I didn't like. Soon, I was giving up on books after only reading 50 or 60 pages. These days, if it doesn't have me hooked in the first five or six paragraphs, fuck it. I may start ditching them if I don't like the first word.
posted by Cookiebastard at 1:07 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


Look we all know what Art is ..It's paintings of horses

We all know what Literature is ..it's dentists having affairs

We all know what Serious Literature is ..It's middle aged academics having affairs

It's simple. Get with the program.
posted by The Whelk at 1:07 PM on December 8, 2014 [21 favorites]


I remember exactly when I developed my own "go fuck yourself" counterpoint argument to this. (Warning: Your favorite book/author sucks.) I gave up reading "One Hundred Years of Solitude" about 50 pages before the end. My expectations had been suffering for the first 350 pages, but it wasn't until that point that I realized, far too late, that they'd be dashed—maybe even beyond my revised version—by the end of the book. I couldn't believe how much mental energy I had put into that book, waiting for it to pay off. Only to feel like a fool by the end of it all.

That's the last book I ever let get away from me in that regard. I'll never do it again.
posted by Brak at 1:07 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


Let me level up and collect loot and achievements and I'll even read Ulysses from start to finish. Upside down. In Linear B.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:08 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


@Foosnark, I have but two words for pretentious literary types who denigrate "genre" fiction and YA/NA fiction: "Die already." Sometimes I have a knife for them, but only if my wife isn't around to stay my hand. :)
posted by starbreaker at 1:08 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


I finished the Wheel of Time series, so I think I have bona-fides as a Book Finisher. But even I will drop a novel if it doesn't draw me in. I only made it about 50 pages into Confederacy of Dunces.
posted by Billiken at 1:08 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


This finishing books idea also, I think, buys into this weird fetishization of reading that I think I see a lot. As previously stated, I like reading, I like reading a whole bunch, which is why I do it. There seems to be a sense among some people that the fact that I like to read either makes me better than other people OR makes me a stuck up snob. Neither of these are true (I hope), but people brag about reading in a way I sometimes find very peculiar. I love reading! I think it's great! I do wish people read more because there's a lot of great stuff out there they might enjoy, and there are lots of neat ideas and books out there, but sometimes I feel like we just treat reading in a very special and odd way, like somehow enjoying that particular activity somehow makes you inexplicably better, which I also think might be a class thing.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 1:08 PM on December 8, 2014 [7 favorites]


Pretty much Cookiebastard's experience with Imajica.
posted by Brak at 1:09 PM on December 8, 2014


I read the whole article and have a point-by-point response

1. bullshit
2. bullshit
3. get the fuck out.


Basically, I think when she says "literary person" she means "person who gets more out of being able to say they read something than actually reading it" and so this whole article is really saying "don't fucking think you get credit for reading "Shitty McShittyson And the Shittiest Novel Ever" if you didn't slog through the whole painful pile of crap like I had to!!!!"
posted by the agents of KAOS at 1:10 PM on December 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


I'll even read Ulysses from start to finish. Upside down. In Linear B.

It's been a long time since I re-read Ulysses, but I seem to recall one of the sections actually included passages in Linear B. Or maybe that was Finnegans Wake, never mind.
posted by aught at 1:10 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


The author won't mind, @Billiken. They're too dead to give a damn.
posted by starbreaker at 1:10 PM on December 8, 2014


As long as you're not burning them, it's all good.
posted by Renoroc at 1:10 PM on December 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


We all know what Serious Literature is ..It's middle aged academics having affairs

Sex and 20 year olds are meaningless so sex with 20 year olds must be sought so the depth of that void can be explored.
posted by Artw at 1:11 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Unlike @Brak and @Cookiebastard, I actually got through Imajica, and laughed my ass off when Hapexamendios (can't believe I remember how to spell that fuckin' name, though it would be great for a technical death metal act) pwned himself at the end.
posted by starbreaker at 1:12 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


I don't consider myself a literary person. No sane person considers me a literary person. I waded through a bunch of pages of Steppenwolf to its rewarding theater scene. I slogged to the end of The Brothers Karamazov because I refused to quit once I had started a book. I read On the Road [fuck you Jack], I read One Hundred Years of Solitude which is oddly on the list of books most started but never finished. I never quit a book once started.

The Portrait of a Lady broke me.

Here is a list from goodreads of the most frequently started but never finished books which seems just a list of books. I am one of the least well read people you will ever meet but even I have read about a quarter of these.
posted by vapidave at 1:12 PM on December 8, 2014


I buy books faster than I read them. Which was always what I hoped would happen when I was young. And of course, there's the problem of me personally needing a book for every mood and circumstance under the sun. I can now proudly say I've started and haven't finished several hundred books in my house. And that number's increasing :)
posted by triage_lazarus at 1:16 PM on December 8, 2014


When you stop short, you risk missing something incredible.

Had we but world enough and time.

I have a bunch of books in my house. Many I have reread and most I have read at least once or twice. I just walked around and reached out, eyes shut, at shelves until I laid hands on ten I have not read all the way through or not even started:

Reading Japanese, a grammar
Opening Gambits: Essays on Art and Philosophy by Mark Kingwell
Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
The Apocrypha, trans. by Edgar J. Goodspeed
Roman, par Polanski (the director's autobiography in French)
The Impossible H.L. Mencken, a collection of his newspaper stories
The Lives of Buildings by Edward Hollis
The Guns of August, by Barbara Tuchman
The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery (a novel)
The Language of Flowers by Sheila Pickles, a guide to the symbology of flowers

A couple of novels, a bunch of reference books, a 500-page autobiography in my second language from an artist whose work I am indifferent to. Realistically, I will go to my grave with half of these things still unfinished. I'd be surprised if some novel undreamt-of delight presented itself in the Second Book of Maccabees, or the entry on the primrose, let alone in some kanzi reading drills.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:16 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


vapidave: weirdly, I read Catch-22 repeatedly in my teens and loved it. But then, I suspect you have to have the right sense of humour to appreciate it.
posted by cstross at 1:16 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


I finish driving every single road I start. I’ve gathered over the years that my persistence—or stubbornness, depending on your point of view—is unusual. Most people I encounter think nothing of driving only part of a road because they find it boring or because they can see where it’s going.

This behavior, common though it may be, seems lazy to me. Wrong, even. Once you start driving on a road, you should finish it.

At risk of offending the no-judgments crowd, here is my case.

First: Pleasure. When you stop short, you risk missing something incredible. I can’t count how many roads have bored me for a hundred or even two hundred miles only to later amaze me with their brilliance.

Second: Fortitude. When a road makes me antsy I sometimes think of the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment from the late 1960s. It may be disagreeable to slog down a road that you stopped liking after 50 miles, but it’s a sign of strength.

Third: Respect. As any civil engineer will tell you, it is one thing to start building a road and another thing entirely to finish one. The difference between being able to build 50 miles of highway being able to build an entire interstate highway system is the difference between a professional and a dilettante.

To exit a highway after a few miles is, then, to disregard what makes it a formal work of infrastructure rather than a heap of asphalt that resides in a dump truck. Starting, but not finishing, roads is one step above saying, "Oh yeah, I've heard of that highway."
posted by compartment at 1:16 PM on December 8, 2014 [22 favorites]


Currently forcing myself to finish Ishmael Reed's "Mumbo Jumbo" and I don't like it one bit. My problem is that I'll buy the book instead of borrowing it and then feel obligated to finish.

If a book doesn't entertain you or enlighten you in some way, why finish it? You don't have to watch every show on tv do you? Extant, for instance. Great premise, horrible execution. I dipped out after 5 episodes. (I'm sure the network considered dipping out about that time, too).
posted by GrapeApiary at 1:17 PM on December 8, 2014


I don't know man. If I'd stopped during the "poem" portion of Pale Fire, I'd have missed, well all of it and all of it is probably the most pleasurable book I've ever read. No one should feel obligated to finish a bad book, but not all books that seem to start out bad are actually bad. The hits are nice, but the B Sides often stand the test of time.
posted by digitalprimate at 1:18 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


Suppose that reading scenes of bad things happening to kids, or kids being threatened, really upsets me, to the point where I don't enjoy the work overall. (A lot of parents find this to be the case) Does that mean that all works of literature in which such things happen are trash? I could see a rape victim being upset by a rape scene in a novel. Does that mean all novels with rape scenes are trash? Someone who is not a parent or who has not experienced rape might be able to read those novels and enjoy them. A work of literature could be good for some people but not for others.

As far as I know, there are no book reviews that focus on trigger warnings. If there were, they would have to contain spoilers, which would have its own set of problems.

If people feel obligated to finish any book they start, that might discourage some people from starting to read any novels at all. How does that benefit literature or authors?
posted by Anne Neville at 1:19 PM on December 8, 2014


As I said in response to this topic when it first appeared in my Facebook feed, a lot of my favorite books have been books I was or might have been tempted to put down earlier in the reading that turned out to be really worth the effort in the end (especially works written according to older approaches to narrative, where character development and rising action were expected to unfold a lot more gradually than in more contemporary work), so I would want to see some modification to this advice that wouldn't deprive my past self of many valued reading experiences, while preserving the spirit of this advice:

1) If you've gotten to the point where the book's actually in your hands, you should probably already know whether or not it's a book you want to read.

2) If you inadvertently bought a book and started to read it without really wanting to, then don't do that anymore.

3) If reading the book you thought you wanted to read turns out to be so physically uncomfortable you can't bear it after all, don't do it, but don't claim you read the book later when asked.

4) Use your judgment in considering the specific thing in front of you at all times and resist the urge/various third-party urgings to make up your mind in advance for all categories of a thing sight unseen, because ultimately that's all this kind of discussion is really an invitation to do.
posted by saulgoodman at 1:20 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


(Sorry--mistyped "article" as "topic"; the topic came up in relation to a different article than the one in the FPP.)
posted by saulgoodman at 1:21 PM on December 8, 2014


I gave up reading "One Hundred Years of Solitude" about 50 pages before the end.

I bet you read it in English too. How you can even pretend to have tried to read it.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:22 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


I read Catch-22 repeatedly in my teens and loved it.

It made me into a pretentious walking thesaurus in junior high; I don't think my mom ever so badly regretted giving me any other book aside from Portnoy's Complaint.
posted by poffin boffin at 1:22 PM on December 8, 2014


the latter only because my favourite swear for at least 5 years was liverfucker
posted by poffin boffin at 1:22 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


Persevering with books till the end has given me a few pleasant surprises (James Baldwin has written my favourite second half of a book). On the other hand, putting down books that weren't rewarding gave me more time to read books that I like, so I can see the appeal of both sides.

As an aside, "stodgy literary types vs genre fiction" seems a bit off. Crime novels have been rehabilitated as a genre, parts of SF are regularly accepted as literature and there are are articles about Game of Thrones (or was that ASOIAF) in LRB. Auden reviewed LOTR for the NYT. I have in front of me an annual literary-criticism tome that has two long articles about Fantasy. And so on.
posted by ersatz at 1:27 PM on December 8, 2014


I actually (not sarcastic) really love that two people in this thread have cited One Hundred Years of Solitude as an example of something that was a slog for them. I totally understand how it could be (still can't quite wrap my head around Lolita, but whatever, you do you, boo), even though for me it was just completely wonderful, but that's the point! Everyone is different! Every work speaks to different people at different times!
posted by sunset in snow country at 1:27 PM on December 8, 2014


I felt very much in company with a lot of those unfinished novels on vapidave's list but was also surprised to see Catch 22 at the top, I read it at 19 and found it unputdownable. Happy to have quit on a large fraction of the next 15 or so.

Finished Dune, but not sure why I bothered, I'd be interested to know the reasons why people jacked some of these in and how these vary with different titles. I mean, I suspect people toss Brief History of Time as its hard, I guess goes over most people's heads like it did over mine. I imagine some of these novels are the same, but others are for other reasons.
posted by biffa at 1:28 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


I don't even have time to finish novels I like.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:30 PM on December 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


I finish driving every single road I start.

Your profile page has you in Arizona; while I admire your perseverance, do you not find it inconvenient that any trip on Interstate 40 must invariably take you to either Barstow CA or Wilmington NC?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:31 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


I keep my own list of books I've started and not finished. it's not that long a list, because I like to think that i've cultivated my ability to choose good books well enough by now, but, they are there to remind me that I'm not above making bad choices.
posted by OHenryPacey at 1:32 PM on December 8, 2014


On the one hand, everyone here that is saying "if it ain't your groove don't dance to it" is right. If you can't get past the first 30 pages of Omensetter's Luck well then that's just fine. The social universal spectral entity called Literature will go on without you, so long as there are still Serious Readers of Serious Books written by Serious Writers (and thank god the world is still producing folks like Eleanor Catton who are willing to take on the task of the Big Novel of Big Ideas).

But on the other hand, there's something to be said for forcing yourself to get past whatever it is about a Novel of High Reputation that is off-putting and pushing your way through to the end. I think expanding your horizons, opening up your mind and all that bullshit isn't really that much bull but instead really crucial to becoming a better person and leading a more interesting, worthwhile life, and if you turn away from things just because you don't get it at first or don't like it right away you really will be missing something. I probably spent 5 or 6 years picking up Gravity's Rainbow and trudging through the first 70 pages before I gave it up for something more engrossing, but when I finally did force myself to finish it, I found treasures buried within.
posted by dis_integration at 1:32 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


I think there is also a bit of confirmation bias going on with the "It was totally worth it and I am a better person" crowd, of which - full disclosure - I am a member. See also: parents.
posted by grumpybear69 at 1:34 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


> surprised to see Catch 22 at the top, I read it at 19 and found it unputdownable

I didn't read it in my teens when one is supposed to, tried in my twenties, and hated the little bit I got through. Same for The Lord of the Rings. The window of opportunity has closed for me for both of those (and I'm okay with that). I did get Catcher in the Rye, Romeo and Juliet, and The Great Gatsby in before I was too old, fortunately -- I don't think I'd like any of them now if I were reading them the for the first time.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:36 PM on December 8, 2014


dis_integration: "and thank god the world is still producing folks like Eleanor Catton who are willing to take on the task of the Big Novel of Big Ideas"

Ha, it's funny you cite The Luminaries because that was the most recent book I really had to FORCE myself through for a while. The first 400 pages were a dull, endless slog; the second 400 were quite a sprightly little story. It read a lot like The Brothers Karamazov, where the first 400 pages were quite uphill going but the second 400 rolled along with magisterial inevitability.

The difference was, the Brothers Karamazov entirely rewarded the work to read the first half; The Luminaries just made me go, "Man, I wish this novel had been 300 pages shorter."
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:38 PM on December 8, 2014


As an aside, "stodgy literary types vs genre fiction" seems a bit off.

It's silly but persistent. Many of us swim happily in both streams of fiction, but I understand there are partisans of either school who get a lot of self-gratification out of pissing on the other, usually out of ignorance what is actually being written in the other genre (sci fi fans who think all mainstream lit is about boring academics, or literary readers who think sf is all kids' stuff -- both positions are equally insipid).
posted by aught at 1:39 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Oh, as much as I'm in the "feel free to stop reading at any point" crowd, I can think of one time when forcing myself to power through paid off. It took multiple tries for me to get more than a few chapters into Master and Commander, but then suddenly I was in and then I read the next 19 books in the series nonstop (itself a controversial way to read them). I just started my third read-through, and never get tired of recommending them in various AskMes (I try to stick to ones where people are asking for book advice).
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:40 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


Incidentally, I will say that I put down Rushdie's Midnight's Children after 10 pages, felt glad that I got it used and feel absolutely no regrets about never planning on picking it up again. I say this only because it helps keep me from turning on my full literary-snob-rage flame jets in response to the second article's attitude towards Nabokov, possibly my favorite 'American' novelist.
posted by dis_integration at 1:43 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


I am reading through Borges' Non-Fictions for about the tenth time in my life, and find myself skipping large chunks of it with regularity. The work of an undisputed master like Borges! It is a book I have had with me for a long time and have read completely at least twice, and I am always dipping into it, but even knowing how good it is, and how valuable it was to me as a young writer and indeed a young man, I don't feel compelled to start it and then finish it just because it's in my hands.

I think forcing yourself to finish something that hasn't got its hooks into you by the pages between 10 and 20 is terrible advice. I don't care what book it is, or who wrote it, or what list it's on. A book shouldn't be a big pile of your least favourite vegetable, that you have to choke your way through just so you can get to the dessert (sticky date pudding, for reference) - you should always skip straight to dessert, because it isn't a meal, it's a book. And you know what your favourite dessert is, and you know it's always good. If a book isn't squirting saliva into your mouth in little jets, and if you don't breathe it in like you breathe in the smell of a lover, than you might as well schedule your shits and start calculating the day of your death because you're going through your existence like a zombie and I suspect you actually hate your own life.

Furthermore, if you get to your 30s and your "to read" pile doesn't contain at least a couple of pieces that you have already read, and if you have never let a book slip from your fingers out of sheer overwhelming disinterest with the thing, then I don't think you have very discerning taste in literature, and are in fact a dilettante, possibly only reading for the cachet it brings you amongst your little squirrel-hive of other dilettantes. You have no love for literature, you have only a love for sheer mass.
posted by turbid dahlia at 1:47 PM on December 8, 2014 [6 favorites]


Recent notable abandonments:

*War and Peace - circumstances forced me to put it aside for a week. When I came back, I could not find the place I left off. Literally could not find it, even when I ctrl-f'd my way through the Gutenberg text. It was like I'd jumped to a parallel universe where Tolstoy excised 100 pages of Pierre's character arc. Someday, I'll find my way back to my home dimension...

*The Adventures of Augie March - I quit it around the bit where Augie drops everything to follow the madcap heiress and her pet eagle to Mexico, where it became clear that Saul Bellow was less interested in Cool Times with Eagles than the inevitable, slow-motion breakdown of a relationship. I'm just can't get too excited about inevitable slow-motion breakdowns of relationships - not even when there's a tempestuous eagle on hand to provide vivid metaphors.
posted by Iridic at 1:51 PM on December 8, 2014


this is idiotic. the Point i mean. not only is she operating on so many abstracted suppositions, but she seems to imagine some cosmic arbiter that invisibly oversees ones reading habits and metes out karmic punishments that could banish all books forever if some are not properly loved.

i've slogged through my fair share of books i didn't care for and i can't say that i'm any more enriched for the endeavors. i don't give a shit about 'literature' but i do have a compulsive desire to read and have done so daily for about 40 years.

i hadn't realized that literature was personified and could suffer harm. i hope that the invisible god of the Arts who watches all cultural consumption doesn't seek to punish me. for, while i do absolutely love Music there are thousands of records that i hope never to have to hear all the way through, and a few hundred or so that i've purchased, skimmed and then resold or traded in for something that i do want filling my brain.

i just reread Lapidos' article one more time before posting this and i can only say that i really just hate this, and her tone in general. i wonder what she'd say of my favorite practice of simultaneously reading several books at one time; one for the subway, one for home, one for bed, one on the couch, one in the kitchen. all of which are picked up and put back down any number of times, some never finished, some with chapters re-read, and all gloriously so mixed and confused in my head that they form one larger and more complete work that does far more for the art than any one author could ever hope to achieve. intellect, intelligence, curiosity and selective attention, not to mention rigorous self-programming, far outweigh the schoolmarmish wont's of a literary scold. (is that last bit too sexist?)
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 1:52 PM on December 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


vapidave: weirdly, I read Catch-22 repeatedly in my teens and loved it. But then, I suspect you have to have the right sense of humour to appreciate it.

Oh, yeah, I wasn't endorsing that list. I loved Catch-22 as well. [The movie wasn't as good as the book. The movie is never as good unless it's based on a short story].

A lot of the books on that list seem to have likely been assigned work, assigned via a professor that identifies with a 19th century lifestyle. I know they try but it's structurally difficult for any teacher to teach what they know. They can't understand how it is that their students don't understand.
posted by vapidave at 1:52 PM on December 8, 2014


Ahhh, I LOVED The Luminaries! I wished it was longer! Seriously.

I wonder if I'm coming at all this from the wrong angle... I finish great books because they are great and terrible books because they are HILARIOUS. It's the middlebrow ones (Amy Tan) that I'm most likely to toss aside.
posted by sunset in snow country at 1:53 PM on December 8, 2014


The thing is, being an experienced and informed reader usually means you develop a feel for books - whether they're going to reward perseverance or disappoint you. Which seems to be the gist of a lot of the comments of this thread - "I know when enough is enough, except in those cases when I was glad I kept at it and was rewarded." I wonder if it's mainly casual readers* who needs a hard and fast rule of thumb about whether to read the whole thing or not? (Because honestly the serious readers I know really don't like to be told what to do and what to read, or not to read as the case may be.)

* you know, that basically non-reader friend who picks up one or two NYT Bestseller List books a year and enthusiastically insists everyone they know just HAS to read them too
posted by aught at 1:55 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


I think forcing yourself to finish something that hasn't got its hooks into you by the pages between 10 and 20 is terrible advice.

In theory, I'd think I would agree with you, but there have definitely been books I ended up being glad I didn't put down, so the advice still doesn't work for me. I've never read books out of any particular sense of duty or moral purpose, though, except for school assignments (wait--no, I did try Ulysses out of a sense of duty once, but I couldn't even figure out which way was up enough to get into it and just gave up; I liked "Finnegan's Wake" and "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," but I'm probably too cynical about literature now to give Ulysses another chance).
posted by saulgoodman at 1:55 PM on December 8, 2014


Bullocks.
posted by harrietthespy at 1:55 PM on December 8, 2014


I won't finish The Fountainhead and you can't make me.
posted by emjaybee at 1:57 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


I won't finish start The Fountainhead and you can't make me.
posted by aught at 1:58 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


Ahahahaha No.

Look, I read a lot of books. Seriously, a lot. The vast majority I finish, sure. But I have no problem whatsoever with not finishing one now and again.

One issue is that some books are utter crap. This is something that does not seem to have occurred to the author of the first piece in the FPP. I reserve a certain vague percentage of books I get for stuff no one has ever heard of, small press, self-published, or just bottom of the list, that happens to catch my interest. I do this because sometimes I strike silver or gold that way, especially for subject matter that can have difficulty getting mainstream attention or publication (L-J Baker! Jane Fletcher! Shea Godfrey! Sarah Diemer!)

... But it also means that sometimes I hit, well, *cough*. ("Why did you run away?" "Because, sexy human, I am actually a Valkyrie who has been trapped on earth for 5,000 years." "Oh, OK, that makes sense. So you need to be discreet?" "Yes. Now I will immediately tell you my entire life story. By the way, when you touch me on the cheek like that, it is a sexual come-on to my people." "Cool. By the way, my parents were killed by a mugger and this fuels my desire for justice and vengeance." "Oh, no! My ancient enemies are attacking!" ... And now it is page 5.) There really are books you can tell you're not going to strike buried gold 150 pages in. It's not going to happen. But honestly, I think I'm probably doing more good for "literature", whatever that means, by tossing some cash at stuff no one has ever heard of, even if I don't finish it all, than by powering through "only the Greats".

On the other hand, another issue is that I do also read the Greats sometimes, and every now and then they just ... don't do it for me. There are a few that others have listed in this thread that I've also failed to complete -- Dhalgren, Gravity's Rainbow, Remembrance of Things Past. I will admit I do consider that a somewhat different issue, because a lot of people have gotten a lot out of those books. That makes it more likely I'll take another crack at them sometime. Maybe it was my mood at the time, who knows? Maybe Gravity's Rainbow just has a slow start; I did like The Crying of Lot 49 quite a bit, after all.

But it's still also possible that I genuinely, sincerely, Just Don't Like Them. And that's fine. If I never actually try them again, or try them again and put them down again, that's also fine. "Literature" will not have a seizure.
posted by kyrademon at 1:58 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Some of the best & most personally important books I've read were ones that I had to force myself to continue at one point or other. In some cases finishing took multiple attempts. (Wolf Hall, I'm looking at you.) For these books, whatever was causing the extra effort is outweighed by the eventual satisfaction.

On the other hand, I've taught myself that it's OK to ditch a book that I'm simply not finding rewarding and move on. It's been a great relief to not treat reading as a chore to get through for some abstract completion reward.

The trick is to be able to distinguish for yourself if there's something worth continuing for.
posted by feckless at 2:00 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Count me in as another one who couldn't make it past the fifty page mark of Confederacy of Dunces. Jebus, what an irritating protagonist. I did have the Da Vinci Code pressed on me as "the best worst book you've ever read" and I did manage to stagger to the end. I found its wretchedness most fascinating, trying to pick apart every little thing that made it bad. And then there's Eragon, pressed on me by a well-meaning fantasy fan. I think I got through three or four pages before my eyes began to bleed. Fuck, that was seven kinds of plagiarized awful. Which brings us to The Wheel of Time. You know, if I had been fourteen years old when this series started I would have been locked in. But I tried to wade in just past my fiftieth birthday. Because some dear friends were so smitten with it I managed to get through the first three books but I quit two-thirds through the fourth. I understand there's some epic battle that I've missed at the end of the book but by Grabthar's Hammer, it was taking so fucking long to get there. So fucking long.

To summarize, I'm all for the putting aside a book that doesn't work and moving on. Life's too short for bad books, movies, beer, etc.
posted by Ber at 2:00 PM on December 8, 2014


grumpybear69: "I think there is also a bit of confirmation bias going on with the "It was totally worth it and I am a better person" crowd, of which - full disclosure - I am a member. See also: parents."

Don't forget about Cognitive Dissonance and the ghosts of Effort Justification and Sunk Cost. I feel like a lot of reading decisions and opinions of said experiences can be explained by them. (Heck, a lot of media consumption in general).
posted by tybeet at 2:02 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


When it comes to questions of how and what to read, one can always rely on the avuncular voice of Italo Calvino: "If there is no spark, the exercise is pointless: it is no use reading classics out of a sense of duty or respect, we should only read them for love."

And Calvino put this idea into practice with If on a winter's night a traveler

(and in the effort, created what I consider one of the indispensable classics that I most certainly read with love).
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 2:02 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


I can't think of a single example of a book that I disliked, kept reading anyway, and decided that I enjoyed it after all. (The Silmarillion comes close, except I find the very first, most mythic part quite charming, the begats horribly dull, and the rest seems to alternate between pretty good and mind-numbing.)

I suppose of the few books that I did give up on, there was some small chance of later redemtpion. But of the three I can think of recently:

#1: The author had some interesting ideas, but their vision of the future included an assumption about human nature that made me wonder if they'd ever met any humans; it was simultaneously naive and insulting. I am forever pissed off at that author, whatever his name was.

#2: A free Kindle book. The first chapter was incredibly dull and loaded with so many basic grammar mistakes that I'm pretty sure only the author read it before its publishing.

#3: The first half of the book was trying hard to funny, multiple times per page, and failed almost every time. When the digital loan expired I let it go.
posted by Foosnark at 2:03 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


I finished "Confederacy of Dunces" but didn't get very much out of it at all, FWIW. Maybe I should have been quicker to put it down, but I still don't regret having read it, because now I know that I think "Confederacy of Dunces" is overrated and that Ignatius T. Reilly is a Weird Harold I would try to avoid writing.
posted by saulgoodman at 2:04 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


i am interested in formally experimental, often pornographic novels, in how they refuse narrative standards. That they are boring is part of the reason they exist, and I read them in order to be bored. I finish them in order to complete my boredom, it's a mutual wrestling. (See Delaney, or Sade or Robbe Gillet)

I am intersted in problems of (often religious) historography--and so reading church records,other people's confessions, 19th century moral novels, the correspondance of bishops isoften terribly terribly boring, but it gives me something to weave in and out of a larger narrative, and so I finish.

I am interested in work of very subtle social manners, where a work must unfold slowly, and the reading is hampered by problems of form--and so the pleasure one gets from them is rarified and not immediate--James is boring, because James is interested in what it means to be bored.

In a similar way, I am interested in difficult, often dense philosophy, because I think that it allows us to parse language, and with that, pehaps how we relate--of course it is boring, to be delibarate is boring.

I love pulp of all kind, and I stop and start often, and I read a chapter or a line or a note, as needed, but this idea that one must be immedaitely satisifed, that makes me a little sad. Some reading is enormously hard work that rewards forbearance.(seriously Sade)
posted by PinkMoose at 2:05 PM on December 8, 2014


Eyebrows McGee: “Ha, it's funny you cite The Luminaries because that was the most recent book I really had to FORCE myself through for a while. The first 400 pages were a dull, endless slog; the second 400 were quite a sprightly little story.”

Isn't this the tedious thing about novels, though? They sit there demanding, absolutely demanding, that you read them in a particular order, and they have a little narrative in there (even the Beckettest of them) to make sure you don't cheat. "Novels" are well-named; their very premises, and all too often the entirety of their good qualities, rest upon the notion that the reader will submit to undergo the prescribed path in uncovering the plot, even when re-reading the novel for the billionth time.

Really, it's an exceedingly modern and of-the-moment medium; we love to forget this and think of novels as "timeless" (and to assume that "book" means "novel" – as I said above) but really it isn't so. People five hundred years ago didn't read novels, not even the people who spent most of their time reading; novels really weren't a thing at all then, or at least they certainly weren't an established form with such unfortunate rules and accepted practices. I suppose we're staring down the barrel of the five hundredth anniversary of Don Quijote, which is one "novel" I adore, although it barely can be thought of as a novel, really, since it was its own thing and part of a wholly different tradition; it is superior to most "novels" because it takes the reader's duties lightly, and because it prods at those duties and expectations with a certain whimsy.

But really, this is why I like reading Aristotle and al-Farabi so much: there is no standard prescribed novel-style narrative guardrail I'm required to hold onto, and in turn the authors will say what they really think without coyly obscuring it or cloaking it in an achingly obvious symbolism.

As far as I can tell, very few novelists have transcended the genre. I know incredibly intelligent people who have never read novels at all, and it doesn't appear to have hurt them. Hell, before about 336 years ago, give or take, nobody read novels, and life appears to have gone on just fine.

Maybe it would be better to stop reading novels and spend one's time on other sorts of books.
posted by koeselitz at 2:06 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


I can't think of a single example of a book that I disliked, kept reading anyway, and decided that I enjoyed it after all

Same. Some have been slow starters, I'll admit, and I reckon I have broken my own 10-20 pages rule more than once, but there's never been anything I started off loathing and ended up loving. The opposite, however, has been true for many things - it's bad to get to 100 pages in something and then have it dawn on you that the next 200 are going to be godawful and that the whole exercise has been a waste.
posted by turbid dahlia at 2:08 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


You know what's the best thing in the world? Wikipedia. Because if you start a book/movie/TV show and want to know what happens but also kind of hate the experience, you can find and read the plot summary. Does the dog die? Does the asshole get his? Is the plot twist the one I think it will be, or will it be better? In fact, I have learned lots about whole genres I cannot stand to read/sit through (horror, spy novels) because I can get the gist from Wikipedia. So I know what people are talking about but I didn't have to suffer to get there.

It's glorious.

But then I am a re-reader. If I like a book I like it better the second time I read it, because I am not stressed by what-ifs and rushing through it. I can take my time and enjoy it. So if the book/movie I got spoilered on still sounds worth finishing, I can go back and finish it and not feel let down.
posted by emjaybee at 2:11 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


You know what's the best thing in the world? Wikipedia. Because if you start a book/movie/TV show and want to know what happens but also kind of hate the experience, you can find and read the plot summary.

Oh, I could never finish Wikipedia, the middle parts just drag on so. Did they make a film of it? I could probably watch a film of it.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 2:13 PM on December 8, 2014 [9 favorites]


koeselitz: Maybe it would be better to stop reading novels and spend one's time on other sorts of books.

Novels have more or less supplanted lyric poetry for "pleasure" "reading". The novel is the leading form of imaginative writing. So basically you seem to be saying, stop it with works of the imagination? I can get on board with carving out a new form of imaginative literature besides the novel (and I think maybe Lydia Davis is on to something with her microstories), but a world without imaginative works of the written word? What a horrible thought.

(As for novels that transcend the genre? Well, high modernism definitely attempted that, Joyce, Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Beckett, etc. but maybe in the sense you're thinking of, Hopscotch by Cortazar or books by Renata Adler? Speedboat is written in a way that you can just flip to any page and read it and get new things out of it, even if you haven't read much that came before.)
posted by dis_integration at 2:14 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


Little known fact: Hate reading propelled Dan Brown to the NY Times Bestseller list. There are only eight people that actually like his books.

True story.
posted by el io at 2:16 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


I enjoy playing boardgames and, on a site where such games are discussed and can be rated by users, there's a faction who believe that you can't really decide if you like a game or not until you've played it several times.

My response to this is, if you are willing to pay me to play a game I don't like to make sure I don't like it, I'll be happy to do so. Otherwise I have other things to do.

Same goes for books.
posted by Legomancer at 2:16 PM on December 8, 2014


Conversely, who takes it personally when someone pans a book you love and recommended to them?
posted by dr_dank at 2:18 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Three "must reads" that I have yet to finish:

Don Quixote, by Cervantes. One of the few "classics" that I never had to read in school. So, one day, I decided to jump in. I'm about half-way through. It's still sitting there on by nightstand. Beckoning. But I've yet to will myself to dive back in.

Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace. I probably slogged about 2/3 of the way into it before I came to the conclusion that the jest was on me. I just didn't see a point to finishing it. Sorry. I really wanted to love it. I didn't.

The Baroque Cycle, by Neal Stephenson. I really loved Quicksilver, and The Confusion, but then there's The System of the World. Honest...I'm only about 300 pages from the end and, as much as I love Stephenson's colorful, dense sentence construction, I find I just don't care anymore. I don't give a shit what happens to anyone in this story anymore. And, I'm a bit annoyed with this underlying feeling I have, rightly or wrongly, that this trilogy is just a big, long blowjob to international finance.

I keep chipping-away at it from time-to-time, though. And I carry it in my backpack everywhere. But I've really lost the zest I had for the story through the first two tomes.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:23 PM on December 8, 2014


“Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.”

― Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature
posted by chavenet at 2:23 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


I'm on my third attempt at Infinite Jest. Third. My secret this time was to skip a lot of the footnotes and then read those all in one go, from time to time. I've gotten to the halfway point in the book so I should finish it off.
posted by hellojed at 2:25 PM on December 8, 2014


Life Is Too Short to read books just because "informed opinion" says they're important.

Most recent example of this in the SF genre for me was The Three Body Problem. Plastered in pull quotes from important contemporary SF writers. Slogged through all of that sub-Asimovian prose and plotting looking for the pony. THERE WAS NO PONY.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 2:25 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


It took me a year to read one book, and it wasn't a very long book, and it was fairly well written, but I wasn't interested after a while. And then the next book I tried to read wasn't well written, so I'll admit it...I gave up on reading it after about two chapters.

By chance I came upon another book -- and I remembered how happy I am when reading, and the pleasure of dissolving into a text. It's not like I jilted the previous book.

But honey, it wasn't ever going to work for us.
posted by datawrangler at 2:26 PM on December 8, 2014


What am I on about? This article, in which we learn that you must finish every book you begin. I’m not sure there’s a lot of reason to respond to this kind of talk, because that’s the sort of imperative command that you, Dear Reader, probably know what to do with unconsciously. You either go “I do!” or you go “the hell I will.”

Well, that certainly sums up my feelings on the matter.
posted by 256 at 2:28 PM on December 8, 2014


Bailing on Infinite Jest after about 50 pages was a pleasure so profound the memory of it still gives me a shiver almost 20 years later. Why would I be so unkind as to have denied myself that kind of joy?
posted by Squeak Attack at 2:30 PM on December 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


"You don't have to eat the whole egg to tell if it's rotten." Joseph Parisi.
posted by TDavis at 2:32 PM on December 8, 2014


The last book I bailed on after about 50 pages was an excessively twee YA fantasy (from the library). I'm pretty sure I'm Juliet Lapidos' definition of Doing It Wrong.
posted by immlass at 2:32 PM on December 8, 2014


I love pulp of all kind, and I stop and start often, and I read a chapter or a line or a note, as needed, but this idea that one must be immedaitely satisifed, that makes me a little sad. Some reading is enormously hard work that rewards forbearance.

But see, that's not where the whole "finish the book you start" thing is coming from. "Finish the book you start" is about bringing the weird moralizing and the sort of stupid blanket rules ("Oh, yes, I think I will finish this book that is intensely triggering! And this one, which turns out to be really racist! And this other one, that turns out only to deal with my area of study in passing, despite the impression given in the introduction and index!") that just....argh, madden one.

"Finish the book you start" really suggests that the way reading is experienced is as fun/not fun, and your job is to be a good little soldier and endure the not-fun. Which is manifestly stupid - some not-fun books are really worthwhile, or really useful; some are the wrong book at the wrong time; some are not-fun because they're god-awful horrible; some are legitimately debatable subjects of inquiry - for instance, I don't ask my students to read overtly racist material unless we're working on something for which it is necessary. "Not fun" isn't just "not a lighthearted romp".

"Have an intellectual interest and pursue it" is the only rule for reading that makes any sense to me.
posted by Frowner at 2:33 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Infinite Jest. Ulysses. Dhalgren. In Search of Lost Time. Confederacy of Dunces.

I have read a ton of books. Part of that is because I don't waste time on books I hate.
posted by sonic meat machine at 2:33 PM on December 8, 2014


Don Quixote, by Cervantes. One of the few "classics" that I never had to read in school. So, one day, I decided to jump in. I'm about half-way through.

How can I tell you this, but ... the second book of Don Quixote is a lot better than the first one(!) At least I liked it better, especially the parts where he keeps bumping into people who have read the first book.
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 2:36 PM on December 8, 2014


*drives back to campus, dons doctoral robes and tam*

Speaking with all the authority vested in me as an official Professor of English, you have my permission to PUT DOWN ANY *#*!! BOOK YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE FINISHING.

Although if you were in my Victorian lit course this semester and didn't finish Kim, you're going to have a hard time answering the extra credit question.

*removes robes and tam*
posted by thomas j wise at 2:36 PM on December 8, 2014 [8 favorites]


And you should certainly finish every single com
posted by sammyo at 2:36 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


I am too old for Aspirational Books (see also: cookbooks, fitness guides, 1001 places to go before you die, etc.).
posted by benzenedream at 2:36 PM on December 8, 2014


dis_integration: “The novel is the leading form of imaginative writing.”

How can any form of writing not be "imaginative"? Also, I guess my point really was: the fact that the novel is currently the "leading" form of writing shouldn't simply mean that we only read (and write) novels. I feel like novels have been sort of fetishized as the form of writing par excellence, to the detriment of other genres.

I have a good friend – one of the more intelligent people I know, and someone who spends his days immersed in books written long before the novel form became popular – who argues that The Lord of the Rings is the greatest written work of the past two hundred years. He bases this argument in large part upon his idea that it's misunderstood for having been read so often as a novel whereas (he argues) it is in fact an epic.

So maybe that misunderstanding is what bothers me. We seem to see everything through the frame of novels these days. There are plenty of worthy books of other types – a rather less experimental but still audacious example that I love is John Berryman's The Dream Songs – but we generally aren't interested in those. And that strikes me as rather sad.
posted by koeselitz at 2:40 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


I use the due date from the library as a guide. If I cannot finish the book in two weeks because I never find time to read it or it is too painful, I simply return it and get a different book.

I am also not adverse to skipping parts of a book. I have gotten half way through and then read the last two chapters to see how it ends. That is usually when I am rooting against a character.
posted by 724A at 2:43 PM on December 8, 2014


Battlefield Earth. I rest my case.
posted by Splunge at 2:43 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Forbes: just a big, long blowjob to international finance.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 2:47 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


Juliet Lapidos says you should finish every book you start.

I used to believe this, but recently I tried to read Atlas Shrugged. I consider myself heroic for getting halfway through.
posted by Drinky Die at 2:49 PM on December 8, 2014


But yes, I kind of agree with koeselitz. Though I do read the occasional novel these days, the majority of my time is spent reading nonfiction. Fiction in general just seems so very indulgent that mostly I can't bother to make time for it anymore, though there are exceptions (Gene Wolfe, Peter Watts, Grant Morrison, Greg Stafford [don't laugh]), and I did like Star's Reach by John Michael Greer an awful lot (Twlight's Last Gleaming less so, but I am still reading it).

Stupidly this doesn't seem to apply to video games (though I mainly avoid games with plots). It totally matters, somehow, whether or not my chariot team (go INVICTVS!) makes it to the big leagues. I know they are ridiculous, but I can't make myself stop...yet.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 2:51 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Donna Tarrt?
More like D'wanna Starrt!

That joke kills with the old men picking up The Goldfinch for their wives at the circulation desk.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 2:52 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


Thorzdad: “Don Quixote, by Cervantes. One of the few ‘classics’ that I never had to read in school. So, one day, I decided to jump in. I'm about half-way through. It's still sitting there on by nightstand. Beckoning. But I've yet to will myself to dive back in.”

JimInLoganSquare: “How can I tell you this, but ... the second book of Don Quixote is a lot better than the first one(!) At least I liked it better, especially the parts where he keeps bumping into people who have read the first book.”

Probably contextually it may help you to know this: following its publication in 1605, Part 1 of Don Quijote was immediately popular in Spain, to the point where there were other authors who wrote spurious "Part 2"s in order to make a buck off of the famous man from La Mancha. Eventually, in 1615, Cervantes felt it was necessary to write an actual Part 2 in order to quell the infernal imitators and lay the matter to rest (rather literally). As a result, Part 2 is animated by a bitterness, a darkness that doesn't exist in Part 1. In Part 1 (which is of course itself a masterpiece) Don Quijote is a silly fool intended to lampoon the ridiculous aspects of the romanticized notions of knights and chivalrous deeds which still lingered. But in Part 2 he is a reawakened, living emblem of everything the Spanish of the time loved; and he comes alive to mock these things, to turn them on their heads, to gently reprimand the people for believing in such nonsense, and to turn us toward the future. There is something deeply aching about Part 2, to the point where I can't help crying when I read it, though I've read it many times; Miguel de Cervantes set out to make fun of these romanticized emblems of sentiment, but without even intending to he created one of the most beautiful literary characters ever to exist.

So: I highly recommend Part 2, if it helps at all.
posted by koeselitz at 2:53 PM on December 8, 2014 [8 favorites]


But then I am a re-reader.

YES ALWAYS. Actually the strangest thing I ever learned about other people's reading habits was not that some people just don't like reading for fun, it was that some people will never read the same thing more than once. HOW. How can you not go back to something that you loved to love it again?

humans, who even knows anymore
posted by poffin boffin at 2:53 PM on December 8, 2014 [6 favorites]


I stopped reading Her Fearful Symmetry halfway through and looked up the plot summary once I got a feeling some Very Bad narrative decisions were incoming. It was even worse than I'd suspected, so I was glad I stopped when I did. I was so disappointed in that book that I subconsciously refused to put it back on a shelf. I shoved it into a drawer instead, perhaps to isolate it and force it to think about what it's done.

I don't regret the lost opportunity to build up my ability to endure intellectual anguish. I don't particularly value that ability anyway. It's sounds pretty passive aggressive, frankly.

I gave up on Connie Willis' Blackout once she started spelling out accents and commenting on how quaint they sounded. And I loved The Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog. But Blackout felt like it was in desperate need of an edit, and that's just too eyerolly for me. I like Connie Willis as a fellow human. She doesn't need my eyerolls. Let's all just move on, shall we?

I give up on books all the time, for a million different reasons. Sometimes I object to the quality of the prose or to cardboard characters, but the hook is interesting enough to keep me reading (Robert Sawyer). Sometimes I hit some blatant misogyny and stop right there (Robertson Davies). Sometimes I'm just disappointed by the plot and I don't want to give a story my time and energy. I hate-read a third of a book once, but I couldn't continue to push myself through it. There are a lot of shouty comments scrawled into the margins of the first third of that book. But I'd rather enjoy a book than shout at it, in the end.

I pick up books based back cover summaries, length (I love a giant middle grade fantasy story), suggestions by friends, strangers, or booksellers, cover art, a good title, articles I've read, book reviews, or pure whim. Sometimes I end up reading a book that's in a genre I generally wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole (The Knife of Never Letting Go, not because it's YA, but because it's horror/suspense) and end up in love something I never would have expected. I enjoy the serendipity of this approach, but it means I always give myself permission to refuse to give my brain over to a story that isn't working for me for whatever reason. No harm, no foul.

If your purpose in reading is a) trying to impress people, or b) suffering through something you hate because it will build your character or something, I think you're doing fiction wrong. I don't care about other people's judgements of my reading choices. I read for me, not for you, and I read because I love it when I fall completely into a story. I'd rather to expand my perception of the world through love, not hate.
posted by Hildegarde at 2:57 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


Bailing on Infinite Jest after about 50 pages was a pleasure so profound the memory of it still gives me a shiver almost 20 years later. Why would I be so unkind as to have denied myself that kind of joy?

I felt exactly this way about Proust. "I can't do this"... followed by a fist-thumping, "I can't do this!" and then suddenly feeling like my free time was my own again.

These days I privilege slim novels over epic ones, because I can get through so many more. I started Wolf In White Van last week and I'll finish it this week. It's ~180 pages and that feels perfect. Not a word wasted.
posted by naju at 2:59 PM on December 8, 2014


I never even started Infinite Jest though I did manage a couple of DFW's books that I actually enjoyed, Broom of the System and the short stories in Girl With Curious Hair come to mind), but at the time when everyone was going nuts over Infinite Jest, I was dealing with some mental health issues involving a paranoia that the universe was a great big joke on me, personally, so I always just kind of gave that particular work the side-eye and kept my distance.
posted by saulgoodman at 3:02 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


These days I privilege slim novels over epic ones

Oh, my goodness, yes. Die, doorstoppers, die. I will put Black Blossom against basically all of EPIC FANTASY that has ever been written any day of the week.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 3:02 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


In fact, screw it, I'm going to go read it again right now.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 3:02 PM on December 8, 2014


YES ALWAYS. Actually the strangest thing I ever learned about other people's reading habits was not that some people just don't like reading for fun, it was that some people will never read the same thing more than once. HOW. How can you not go back to something that you loved to love it again?

According to the numbers, straight adult men don't read any fiction at all and I have no idea why.
posted by The Whelk at 3:05 PM on December 8, 2014


If you're a well-read person, you've probably read enough books in your lifetime to know whether finishing a book is worth your time or not.

I usually either give up after the first few pages, give up after the first few chapters, or finish the book.
posted by subdee at 3:09 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


According to the numbers, straight adult men don't read any fiction at all and I have no idea why.

Huh. I don't think they surveyed me. I would have pulled the mean up considerably.
posted by aught at 3:12 PM on December 8, 2014


I honestly couldn't finish Atlas Shrugged. After the umpteenth sex scene where the characters get horny by telling each other how selfish they are... it is just plan bad. Likewise 50 Shades of Gray, I couldn't get past the first chapter (I was still in the book store at that point).

Some books were not meant to be finished.
posted by Vindaloo at 3:14 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


You know what's the best thing in the world? Wikipedia.

[CITATION NEEDED]
posted by Celsius1414 at 3:15 PM on December 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


I only read the title of Infinite Jest. I just thought: well, I won't finish that.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 3:19 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


These days I privilege slim novels over epic ones

Same here. But still, Pillars of the Earth is MAGNIFICO!
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:21 PM on December 8, 2014


Oh Christ. While it seems to characterize much of the internet and a lot of metafilter these days (see also the cooking thread below) I find this habit of arguing over provocatively phrased but ultimately trivial opinions so so tiresome. As if every approach to life or culture must be couched in imperatives. It's like an endless sophomore dorm argument.
posted by octobersurprise at 3:25 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


I am honestly shocked that this is an argument. This wouldn't hold true for movies, TV shows, albums, or anything else. Is this just posturing or something? Because of fucking course you put down a book you don't like. At any point. You do not owe it to the author or the god of books or whatever principle you think makes it imperative to finish books. Is this a crappy book I've invested more time in than it was worth? Yes? Then the book gets flung across the room and the author shall forever be considered someone who owes me X hours of my time back.

And yes, you have read enough of something 3/4 of the way in to have a conversation about it. If you choose to put it down at that point, you can damn well explain what you didn't like about the thing.
posted by Hoopo at 3:31 PM on December 8, 2014


"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. "

- Sir Francis Bacon
posted by ogooglebar at 3:31 PM on December 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


oh wow imagine a God of Books.

imagine his beard.

he would be like Umberto Eco except with more books and more beard.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:33 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


This could be about when I raced my sister through The Brothers Karamazov, lost and stopped after reading the first 3 parts because I realized I didn't remember enough for the 4th and final part to mean anything to me, but this is more about the general idea I came to: I like to read. If a book is not compelling me to read I must leave it behind (for now, at least). The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, that gorgeous, gorgeous novel that I just didn't want to spend time on had to be put down.

Now I read a whole lot more. Or at least I did until I lost my commute. Now I need to figure out how to get myself back on that horse. Surely not by forcing myself to finish books that aren't compelling.
posted by mountmccabe at 3:35 PM on December 8, 2014


The Neverending Story is a trap! It's a trap, I tell you!
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 3:36 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


There is something deeply aching about Part 2, to the point where I can't help crying when I read it, though I've read it many times; Miguel de Cervantes set out to make fun of these romanticized emblems of sentiment, but without even intending to he created one of the most beautiful literary characters ever to exist.

My dirty secret is that I love reading about people critiquing books they love regardless of what I think of them.
posted by ersatz at 3:37 PM on December 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


he would be like Umberto Eco except with more books and more beard.

So ..Umberto Eco?
posted by The Whelk at 3:38 PM on December 8, 2014 [5 favorites]



BALOWSKI: All right, mate, all right. I'll tell you something. I've got war tattooed on this hand, and I've got peace tattooed on this hand and I've got the brothers Karamazov tattooed down me spine. Except you can't see that, cause I've got me shirt on.

NEIL: Isn't it painful?

BALOWSKI: No, it's polyester and cotton.
posted by Artw at 3:42 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


Shitty McShittyson And the Shittiest Novel Ever wasn't actually as bad as you might think.
posted by Flunkie at 3:43 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


Books, if we view them scientifically, are just lists of words; and we all know that you can digitize any string of words into a single (very long) number. So simply by counting upwards from 1, you will eventually have recited every work of literature ever written, which is pretty much the same as reading them. That's what I've been doing for a long time now, and I'm making great progress - I'm up to 12. 11 was pretty hard going but I thought, could be Shakespeare or something, so I shouldn't bail out halfway. Imagine if I'd only counted "elev" - ! The ending was the best part. Anyway, I'm up to twelve. I should probably blog this project, right?
posted by the quidnunc kid at 3:43 PM on December 8, 2014 [5 favorites]


I still can't get over how many people apparently throw books.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 3:44 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


I still can't get over how many people apparently throw books.

What, you don't get bugs in your house?
posted by Hoopo at 3:49 PM on December 8, 2014


I don't know man. If I'd stopped during the "poem" portion of Pale Fire, I'd have missed, well all of it and all of it is probably the most pleasurable book I've ever read.
I seem to remember either Nabakov or Kinbote (I forget which) suggesting, up front, to skip the poem and go right to the commentary. I took him at his word.
posted by Flunkie at 3:50 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


My new reading technique is unstoppable. Not only do I not finish books I don't like, I don't even start them. Uncle Google tells me there are 130 million books in the world. To put it lightly, the portion I will be able to read in a lifetime is rather less than 1%. The most important thing to do then, is to reject as many potentially bad books as possible, as quickly as possible, so as to have more time for the remainder that are likely to be good. Judging books by their covers works surprisingly well, as the cover design correlates strongly to the contents. The less I have to know about a book before I can make a decently accurate prediction about its quality, the better. It doesn't matter in the slightest if I happen to reject thousands, or indeed millions of fantastic books that I would actually have enjoyed enormously, because no matter what, I will never be able to read all the fantastic books that I would have enjoyed enormously anyway. All I can do is ensure that whatever I do read is likely to be good.
posted by hyperbolic at 4:04 PM on December 8, 2014




Juliet Lapidos says you should finish every book you start.

Nope.

Why should I respect a book enough to finish it if, by page 34, a book clearly shows it has no respect for me as a reader? Listen, I get that some books need a hard grind to get through - and I am totally fine with that - but some books are just so awfully written that I am not going to waste anymore time than I spent on pages 1-33.

I have this discussion every day with Mr Bookish who will finish anything he starts and I just don't get it.
posted by kariebookish at 4:17 PM on December 8, 2014



I still can't get over how many people apparently throw books.

What, you don't get bugs in your house?


Kubrick liked to read novels to get ideas for movies. His assistant at the time noticed there was a fiary steady THUNK, THUNK sound as he read a book from his pile then threw it at the wall the instant he hated it.

The assistant knew something was up when the THUNK THUNKs stopped. And the book Kubrick was reading was The Shining.
posted by The Whelk at 4:17 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


I am too old for Aspirational Books

No way. Aspirational reader till the bitter end. And a good third of what I purchase even is punching above my weight or just flat out unrealistic. Firm belief struggling with difficult books is a worthwhile part of reading. Reading every page of everything you start just isn't that, it's the futile drudgery of a penitent sinner.
posted by batfish at 4:21 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


the portion I will be able to read in a lifetime is rather less than 1%

Rather less, indeed. If the 130 million were precise, and no new books came along, reading a book per day starting tomorrow, my blunt pencil and envelope back suggests you would be finished in 5575 CE. Late July, so your beach reading would end halfway through the summer, unfortunately.

As a side note, those last twenty years you would be using books on tape because well duh.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:26 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


I still can't get over how many people apparently throw books.

I have definitely flung my Kindle off the couch while letting out a strangled scream of despair/rage.
posted by yasaman at 4:30 PM on December 8, 2014


What, you don't get bugs in your house?

When I was working for one of the University of Chicago Press journals, I was stationed in a nifty office in Wieboldt Hall that nevertheless had an unfortunate vent connection to the hellmouth that was the basement. Horrific creepy-crawly things lived (and presumably continue to live) in the basement. One day, one of those horrific creepy-crawly things came up to visit me in my office, and I promptly destroyed feminism forever by jumping on a chair and screaming. Then, in a moment of inspiration, I dropped a handy paper towel over the horrific creepy-crawly thing, and killed it with the Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed. Moral of the story: the Chicago Manual of Style is very handy to have around if you want to kill horrific creepy-crawly things. (Well, and also if you're the editorial assistant at Modern Philology.)
posted by thomas j wise at 4:48 PM on December 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


ooo one book I was angry to have finished was The Alchemist. It was recommended to me by a friend, so I kept going thinking that there must be something he saw in it. Put it on the bookshelf and tried to forget it so as to not lose respect for my friend. Years later my mom spots it and asks to borrow it, because she's heard it was good. I lent it to her with the caution that it was dreadful. 2 weeks later she tries to return it agreeing that it was the worst and I was all no way man that shit's yours now, just burn it or something.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 4:54 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


I'm a compulsive story-finisher (we were just talking about this at yesterday's meetup!), but the older I get, the more likely I am to heave a sigh and put a book down. There are so many other books to read that I'm not going to stick with something that I'm forcing myself through. I read pretty quickly, so I usually give it at least 75-150 pages. Sometimes it's just not meant to be.

But that also means that my commentary on certain books is going to be limited, and I would never claim that I've read them.
posted by wintersweet at 5:00 PM on December 8, 2014


I used to be a finish every book you start guy. That ended with Salman Rushdie and The Moor's Last Sigh. I just kept falling asleep slogging through it and eventually gave up. Since then, not finishing books has been the rule rather than the exception. Especially nonfiction.
posted by pravit at 5:01 PM on December 8, 2014


My wife has read every single word ever published by David Foster Wallace but I am one of those people who cannot get 40 pages into Infinite Jest without some rusty gear deep within my consciousness seizing up hard and all the words suddenly looking like ROT13.

On the other hand, while she's read and enjoyed a fair amount of Anne Rice's stuff, on the day she picked up The Witching Hour after a few hours I heard her announce "all right, the next incest scene I get to I'm throwing this book against a wall." Half an hour later, yep, THUMP.
posted by localroger at 5:05 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Obviously people should read Great Literature to completion; the problem is people are lazy and disrespectful to authors. They will not do this voluntarily, so they must be forced to do so, for their own good.

The solution is really to task a government agency, the NSA say, to monitor our reading, keeping a running total of our page-by-page progress to make sure we're not slipping to the end of our Book of the Month selections. Perhaps the public could be required to do short reports or essays after finishing, to show that they read with comprehension, not just flip the pages.

Because after all, reading isn't about pleasure, but for lifelong learning and becoming part of the literary zeitgeist. Just imagine how superior the new model literary citizen will be!
posted by happyroach at 5:16 PM on December 8, 2014


Okay, now, if we're talking just plain obviously bad, I will put down a book that's just obviously not well written, but when it comes to the deeper stuff going on in a book, I'm willing to put in some work to see where the author's headed. Is that okay English professor upthread, or do I just have to put the book down the instant it displeases me or makes my head hurt for a second?
posted by saulgoodman at 5:18 PM on December 8, 2014


I have thrown books. I've read David Lavender's exceedingly good history Bent's Fort several times, and every single time I fling it harder and harder across the room. It's not because it's a poorly-written book; on the contrary. It's because I get to the part where William Bent begs General Chivington of the U.S. Cavalry to help him make peace with the Cheyenne because his wife, his inlaws, and his children are Cheyenne, and Chivington refuses, so William Bent went to Washington to try to get the U.S. government to make peace, and Chivington kidnapped William Bent's Cheyenne son and forced him at gunpoint to lead them to the Sand Creek camp where Chivington and his hooligans slaughtered four hundred women and children, killing the children first because (said Chivington) "nits make lice," and because this is a fucking thing that fucking happened

So I have to throw something. And the book is what's in my hand. That's all.
posted by koeselitz at 5:20 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


If you consider yourself a literary person, you shouldn't just embrace the intellectual cachet that starting books gives you.

You know, even if the rest of the article was super well thought out and written, which it isn't, not by a long shot, no way, that sentence alone would be enough to render the rest of it invalid.
posted by signal at 5:24 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


All I do is read and read and read and read, but if I thought I had to finish everything, my reading list would drop to zero.

Last book I dropped: The Nine Tailors because I couldn't handle Lord Peter being an expert on bells on top of everything else and I remembered the plot from the first time I read it, twenty years ago. I took a break from Wild, and now it may go back to the library. I already know that she survives to write a bestselling memoir.

A couple of years ago, I read The Pickwick Papers for the first time because I was being a completist and reading all of Dickens' novels. I'd tried it before, but never made it beyond the first chapter, which is probably one of the dullest things ever written. Mr Winkle trying to ride a horse made me laugh and I really enjoyed everything after that. That was in chapter five. I can't imagine slogging through the entire thing if I found it annoyingly quaint.
posted by betweenthebars at 5:26 PM on December 8, 2014


According to the numbers, straight adult men don't read any fiction at all and I have no idea why.

-- The Whelk
You know what they say about lies, damned lies, and statistics, right? My driver's license identifies me as an adult at thirty-six years of age, I've either got a cock, or an outrageously large clitoris, and both my wife and I would be shocked if I wasn't heterosexual. You know what I'm reading right now? Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. Good shit, too. Couple of days ago I finished reading Ice Forged by Gail Z. Martin. Another ripping yarn. Before that, I was reading a book by Sally Weiner Grotta called The Winter Boy whose female characters reminded me of the Bene Gesserit. Worth reading if you can get a copy online. I read SF and fantasy for pleasure, not just because I write that the stuff myself.
posted by starbreaker at 5:47 PM on December 8, 2014


Someone has never picked up the Bible

Or the Life and Opinions of Tristran Shandy, which I absolutely adored but like many others, could never finish. I did, however, get through Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle, which I suspect many others completed as well (just not my close group of friends).

Love Confederacy of Dunces. It's a comic masterpiece and I read it once a year. The idea that anyone should read something they really don't care for is absurd and almost Ignatius like.
posted by juiceCake at 5:47 PM on December 8, 2014


Love Confederacy of Dunces. It's a comic masterpiece and I read it once a year.

[slight derail] It's a fucking shame an editor or two couldn't have taken the time to do that because we might have more books from Toole.
posted by localroger at 5:51 PM on December 8, 2014


> I dropped: The Nine Tailors

That's taking things a bit too far, sir or madam.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:09 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


It's a fucking shame an editor or two couldn't have taken the time to do that because we might have more books from Toole.

Robert Gottlieb worked with it for two years before O'Toole committed suicide.
posted by IndigoJones at 6:10 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


An Author has to try to make you want to keep reading on from the first chapter. Even if the first chapter is kinda dry, there has to be at least a little hint woven in there implying that it will be worth the effort by the end. If it doesn't work, then perhaps it is not meant to be.


Quasi-Spoiler: There's a really strange messed-up-junkie drama towards the end of 'Infinite Jest' that would make for an interesting stand-alone short story, if you like this sort of thing.

Also: If you can make it to the last few pages of '100 Years of Solitude', then there's a weird punch-line at the end.

And: 'Ulysses' is swell when glancing at single pages at random, like a book of poetry.
posted by ovvl at 6:18 PM on December 8, 2014


I only read the title of Infinite Jest. I just thought: well, I won't finish that.

Although, the Reader's Digest version, Finite Jest (in Uniform), is surprisingly digestible.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 6:19 PM on December 8, 2014 [7 favorites]


I only read about half of this thread before I decided to skip ahead and post this.

I don't usually quit books, but I will stop reading them for long periods. Sometimes I will come back to them and sometimes I won't. Maybe I will before I die.

Also, am I the only person who hasn't literally thrown a book across the room?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:58 PM on December 8, 2014


I read a lot. I believe I've finished every book I've ever started. But not Gravity's Rainbow. Oh, hell no. Had to read it for a lit class and halfway through the quarter the professor dropped a deal on us: we could finish the book or write an enormous essay on another book. That was it -- not finish Gravity's Rainbow and write an essay about it. Just finish it. Just read the damn pages. I chose to write the big essay on another book. Gravity's Rainbow can go to hell.
posted by BlahLaLa at 7:10 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


I grew up being taught very sternly that books are the most sacred objects we have, and that mistreating them was one of the worst things you can do. I still remember being a little kid and playfully kicking some book my brother was reading, and then having my parents teach me very seriously that that was absolutely not acceptable in the way you talk to a kid if he punched another kid in the face. I assumed everyone grew up with the same lectures, and it's still embedded in my brain somehow, so it still throws me for a loop that people throw books across the room! (To this day, my mom freaks out when she visits and I have books laying around everywhere.)
posted by naju at 7:10 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


Also, am I the only person who hasn't literally thrown a book across the room?

Having read the rest of the thread, I see that I am not.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:16 PM on December 8, 2014


I am a pickier reader than I was 30 years ago, but remarkably, don't seem to have trouble finding enough books to read. But also, "picky" doesn't mean that I don't sometimes push myself through a book for a while, to see if the author is going somewhere interesting. The books I love aren't usually a nonstop thrill ride, but pull me along with things that interest and delight me (or intrigue me) to get me to whatever the big plot idea/resolution actually is. If the trip is extremely enjoyable, I cut the writer more slack if the resolution isn't the best. But even an awesome plot twist doesn't make up for chapters full of dullness. Which is why if plot twists are all you got, you should write short stories.
posted by emjaybee at 7:40 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Camp The Hell I Will forever.
posted by Lexica at 7:45 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


incidentally, I will say that I put down Rushdie's Midnight's Children after 10 pages, felt glad that I got it used and feel absolutely no regrets about never planning on picking it up again.

oh noooooo. I know there's no way to say this without sounding patronizing, but at least for me, Midnight's Children is the canonical example of a book I pushed through my distaste for and ended up loving. For the first 25-50 pages I was all "wtf even is this terrible shit" and then got TOTALLY ENGROSSED. I feel like Rushdie has a really unique rhythm that really doesn't make sense at all until you've lived in it for a little while.
posted by threeants at 8:03 PM on December 8, 2014


The last book I finished under duress was Twilight. (As a result of the (I Hate This Book) No You Don't ... You Love It! FPP, which led to this MeTa.)

That book is fractally bad. I mean, there's high-level ethical "you're sending unhealthy messages about relationships" bad. There's mid-level storytelling "nobody cares about her eating granola for breakfast (unless she's going to choke on it because she's so damn clumsy like you keep going on and on about)" bad. And there's low-level grammatical "FFS YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO USE COMMAS CORRECTLY" bad.

I used to take the book and my fine-point pen to the Trappist and do a chapter or two while drinking a beer. (I once managed three chapters before hitting "I'm so pissed off at this book that my comments are becoming vitriolic instead of snarky".) It took multiple visits to finish the thing.

A few weeks later I was there again, reading a book. The bartender, who'd seen me there marking up Twilight many a weekend afternoon, asked, "So, is this another punishment book?"

I promised myself in that moment that I would have a really, really good reason before inflicting another punishment book on myself.
posted by Lexica at 8:18 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


I don't know man. If I'd stopped during the "poem" portion of Pale Fire, I'd have missed, well all of it and all of it is probably the most pleasurable book I've ever read.
I seem to remember either Nabakov or Kinbote (I forget which) suggesting, up front, to skip the poem and go right to the commentary. I took him at his word.
OK, I looked it up. Here's Kinbote writing towards the end of his foreword to Pale Fire:
To this poem we now must turn. My Foreword has been, I trust, not too skimpy. Other notes, arranged in a running commentary, will certainly satisfy the most voracious reader. Although these notes, in conformity with custom, come after the poem, the reader is advised to consult them first and then study the poem with their help, rereading them of course as he goes through the text, and perhaps, after having done with the poem, consulting them a third time so as to complete the picture.
posted by Flunkie at 9:01 PM on December 8, 2014


Regardless of your opinion on this (rather silly, imo) matter, it's clear that everyone needs to run out and read Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point.
posted by mrgrimm at 9:19 PM on December 8, 2014


I have so many thoughts on this! (Disclaimer: self-linking within because I have a few bits that seem relevant to this discussion.)

"I think forcing yourself to finish something that hasn't got its hooks into you by the pages between 10 and 20 is terrible advice. I don't care what book it is, or who wrote it, or what list it's on. A book shouldn't be a big pile of your least favourite vegetable, that you have to choke your way through just so you can get to the dessert "

I actually make myself go to about page 100 because I'm a speed reader, but good point.

"I can't think of a single example of a book that I disliked, kept reading anyway, and decided that I enjoyed it after all."
"Same. Some have been slow starters, I'll admit, and I reckon I have broken my own 10-20 pages rule more than once, but there's never been anything I started off loathing and ended up loving. "

This is also a good point. I won't review a book unless I've finished it because it doesn't seem fair to not finish it, but the few I've dragged my ass through never got better. This is one I only finished because it was sent to me by an agent and I felt obligated to, and it would have been a WALL FUCKING BANGER very early on. Then it improved...and then by the end it enraged me again. Not worth sticking with, as it turned out. I only finished this one because I wanted to write a scathing review of it and felt like I couldn't do it without finishing it. And really, was it worth it to finish these turds? No, it was not.

"Lately the only times I force myself to finish a book are for my book club. "

See, the lovely thing about not being in school is that I don't HAVE to read any book I don't want to any more. (Also, that agency stopped sending me free books, so I don't have that on my conscience any more.) I don't HAVE to read Great Literachoor I despise, like Death in Venice, that lovely book about a wannabe pedophile. (Seriously, IN HIGH SCHOOL THEY MADE ME READ IT. Where were the crazy campaigning parents in my district?) Which is why I find the idea of book clubs to be such a turnoff, really. I also find it ludicrous when my friend reports back on her book club and mentions that they all seem to rarely even OPEN the book. Then what's the point, then?

"I stopped reading Her Fearful Symmetry halfway through and looked up the plot summary once I got a feeling some Very Bad narrative decisions were incoming. It was even worse than I'd suspected, so I was glad I stopped when I did."

Oh my GAWD, THAT BOOK WAS SO FUCKED UUUUUUUUUUUUUUP. No twin should ever, ever read it in particular. I don't know what the author was fucking thinking.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:24 PM on December 8, 2014


TL:DR

Someone might have already made that joke, but, ahem - tl:dr.
posted by Hello, I'm David McGahan at 10:32 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


I've no compulsion to finish books, and I take the same attitude with other works of art. For example, I've never finished listening to Band Aid's celebrated charity single, Do they Know It's Christmas? As a result, I don't even know who "they" are, or whether they do, in fact, know that it is Christmas. But seriously - can they just not look at a fucking calendar? What are they, living in a third world country or something? Just turn on the television for fuck's sake, you'll soon see the John Lewis Christmas ad. Idiots.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 11:19 PM on December 8, 2014


Also, I just couldn't get through Beethoven's Fifth. Da da da - what's next? I don't know. Dee? "Da da da dee?" No? Is it, "Da da da ding?" I mean it can't be "Da da da chicka chicka wow", can it? I would have listened to THAT.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 11:26 PM on December 8, 2014


My sister just read a book about Stockholm Syndrome. She said it was pretty bad at first but by the end she kind of liked it.
(via the Drabblecast)
posted by Zigurana at 12:30 AM on December 9, 2014 [3 favorites]


I love reading, I teach literature, and I am an unapologetic book abandoner. Life is too short to force myself to finish a book. I do give it some time--usually about 50 pages--but if I'm not feeling it, I put it down. Sometimes I come back to abandoned books when I'm in a more suitable frame of mind, an idea Damien suggests in his article. But if it's actually making me miserable? Forget it.

There is occasionally the stealth stinker. For example, I read about 3/4 of Her Fearful Symmetry and thought it was ok, and then...well, it's just as bad as jenfullmoon says in her comment. But I finished it because I had already read most of it and had to see how much more ridiculous it could get. (Answer: very)
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:40 AM on December 9, 2014 [1 favorite]


The very first book I remember not finishing was in 1993, when I was a young mother, with two children in nappies (diapers to you), and reading was my escape from poverty, isolation and a dreadfully unhappy marriage. It was a second hand book, and I remember nothing more about it than it was science fiction. There were marginal notes that I found both mildly amusing and distracting until it became a discussion of the other reader's developing sexual relationship with his brother. The final straw was a smear, happily captioned as evidence of a wicked incestual tryst. The book was flung into the garbage and I washed my hands vigorously for some time after.

There was already enough shit in my life.

However, once you break that chain of never done things, you are free to abandon terrible tomes without the self-disparagement that previously pretended to be discipline and worthiness. So it all turned out for the best.
posted by b33j at 1:44 AM on December 9, 2014


According to the numbers, straight adult men don't read any fiction at all

#notallstraightadultmen

Though it was telling that at the recent blind book date at the American Book Center I was iirc one of three men present, and one of them the organiser.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:19 AM on December 9, 2014 [1 favorite]


Hey Flunkie, "OK, I looked it up. Here's Kinbote writing towards the end of his foreword to Pale Fire..."

And you believed Kinbote?

;)
posted by digitalprimate at 4:02 AM on December 9, 2014


You can also cite Pennac, if you want to defend your rights as a reader (and sound more intellectual in doing so):

The reader's bill of rights:

1. The right to not read
2. The right to skip pages
3. The right to not finish
4. The right to reread
5. The right to read anything
6. The right to escapism
7. The right to read anywhere
8. The right to browse
9. The right to read out loud
10. The right to not defend your tastes”

posted by yann at 5:08 AM on December 9, 2014 [6 favorites]


@yann, it's easier to break out the Kubrick Stare and tell them, "When I want your opinion, I'll beat it out of you with the rest of the shit." But I'm an exile from New York, and issuing a threat instead of just dealing out a beatdown is considered polite. :)
posted by starbreaker at 6:28 AM on December 9, 2014


Of course, everyone has a RIGHT to quit a book or anything else whenever. I didn't know we were debating basic rights here; I thought we were just discussing preferences and reading styles. I still think there are definitely difficult/challenging books that can give some readers a rewarding experience that they wouldn't like to be precluded from having. I also assume some people really do get a healthy and perfectly legitimate kick out of other inscrutably pointless activities that I personally couldn't imagine myself doing, like mountain climbing.

What I don't get is where the urge to proselytize whatever your own reading preference is comes from. Isn't it just a species of conformist thought to insist the question at the heart of this discussion has or needs a single, simple answer for everyone?
posted by saulgoodman at 7:15 AM on December 9, 2014


Also, am I the only person who hasn't literally thrown a book across the room?

I would never throw a book across the room, even if I disliked it intensely, because of the chance it would break the spine or smash edges of pages - thereby lowering the book's credit value at my local used book store.
posted by aught at 7:40 AM on December 9, 2014 [2 favorites]


What I don't get is where the urge to proselytize whatever your own reading preference is comes from.

Wasn't that the basic premise of both the FPP's links, two article writers advocating their own preferences to the general reading population?
posted by aught at 7:43 AM on December 9, 2014


What I don't get is where the urge to proselytize

Dude. Internet.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:36 AM on December 9, 2014 [4 favorites]


I used to force myself to finish every book I started. Then, just before the movies started coming out, I decided to re-read the Lord of the Rings. I had loved those books and re-read them many times as a teenager, and decided it was time re-visit them. It did not go well. After I had finished forcing myself to finish those books, I swore never to do that to myself again. I also learned a lesson about revisiting fondly remembered books from my youth (it took a couple more sad and disappointing re-readings of other books though). Tastes change, I guess.

Since then my love of reading has only increased, as I feel absolutely no guilt about dropping a book if it isn't my cup of tea, so thoroughly enjoy every book I read.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:37 AM on December 9, 2014


Wasn't that the basic premise of both the FPP's links, two article writers advocating their own preferences to the general reading population?

Exactly. But why do people want to do that in the first place? What makes us want to argue that our preferences should be universal? I get that some things aren't really just down to individual preference, and I get there's a long history of cultural/political elites dictating canon to the public and shaming people who don't measure up to those arbitrary cultural standards. But this seems to be more about arguing there's a right and wrong way to read for pleasure, which to me seems like just so much noise. Also we seem to be ignoring/shirking the basic question of whether or not the reason someone doesn't like a book is due to poor reading comprehension or other deficits in the basic mechanical/cognitive skills of the reader.

If the physical act of reading engages specialized brain functions that aren't exercised by other activities, then it may be the case that people who don't read enough literally don't develop certain basic mental abilities. There's definitely a lot of uncontroversial evidence that reading stimulates novel brain processes. There's even evidence that reading structured, long-form narratives can play an important role in developing and strengthening attention spans.

So isn't it kind of important why a given reader doesn't engage with a particular book? If the reason is that the reader is too inexperienced and unskilled to follow what they're reading, is it really good advice to tell them they should be more willing to give up on any book, categorically? As an early ESL learner, I might have given up early if I thought that was an option. But I needed to assimilate, and the thought of just giving up on reading a book at the first sign of challenge seems like a pretty privileged way to look at what reading skills actually are.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:17 AM on December 9, 2014


What makes us want to argue that our preferences should be universal?

I think the first writer was arguing that her preferences should be universal, but the second one was arguing that we should each pay attention to our own preferences and read accordingly. His piece was pretty much the opposite of "do it my way".
posted by Lexica at 9:51 AM on December 9, 2014


Saulgoodman, another way to look at it is that if we force developing readers to finish everything they start, we are also removing an opportunity for them to develop critical thinking skills around the process of reading itself. I really believe it's important for them to feel agency--not that they should just abandon anything they find too difficult, but maybe feel the freedom to think about why they don't want to finish reading something--is it boring? Not at an appropriate reading level? Not the right time in this person's life for this particular book? These are all legitimate questions for readers to ask themselves.

This article by Kate Nonesuch explains why it's important for developing readers to recognize their agency in continuing reading, or moving on to something else: "A Healthy Disrespect."
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:16 AM on December 9, 2014 [1 favorite]


Well, when I first encountered the second writer's arguments, it was in a FB post from a friend using it to argue positively for giving up on books very lightly--even though that author expresses their own intention not to do that in the first few paragraphs... But the first writer obviously does want to argue their preferences are "truth," so it's still a relevant question (and to be honest, it's really more of a rhetorical question because I just keep seeing examples of the tendency lately and it's got me curious what it's all about).

Not the right time in this person's life for this particular book? These are all legitimate questions for readers to ask themselves.

Definitely. For established, strong readers, absolutely. As long as it's understood that weaker, still developing readers might actually need to hear exactly the opposite advice at various points in their development as readers.

When I tutored English at my junior college, I had to encourage people to keep reading things they would rather not read all the time, and more often than not, they got a real sense of accomplishment out of it once they'd successfully completed a difficult reading task. That's not reading for pleasure, but even outside of academic and formal educational settings, there are widely different levels of development as a reader and it seems to me we're missing something if that's not something we think about when discussing this kind of thing.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:24 AM on December 9, 2014 [1 favorite]


What makes us want to argue that our preferences should be universal?

Yeah, that's an unforgivably egotistical premise. I think it's fine for other people to be wrong.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 10:24 AM on December 9, 2014 [5 favorites]


What makes us want to argue that our preferences should be universal?

Loneliness? The desire, when you've been strongly affected by a work of art (positively or negatively), for kindred souls who understand because they've had similar experiences? That's why the second worst thing is when nobody likes or cares about the thing you love, but the worst thing is when lots of people care about the thing you love, but they're experiencing it wrong, in a way that makes you feel even more lonely and alienated.

Or worse, simply the self-righteous pleasure of telling someone else that they're wrong.
posted by straight at 10:34 AM on December 9, 2014 [1 favorite]


I'm really not trying to be glib with that observation, although I'm starting to think it's probably too abstract a question for this topic. Either way, I think that tendency to treat arbitrary preferences as something more substantial touches on something deeply connected to how we construct our social identities. That's my read on this, taking it to be a discussion for the benefit of already strong readers. Taking it from the POV of a weak or more easily discouraged developing reader, I'm skeptical it's always sound advice.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:37 AM on December 9, 2014


What I don't get is where the urge to proselytize

Dude. Internet.

Don't get me started. Please.
posted by someone is wrong on the internet at 10:49 AM on December 9, 2014 [3 favorites]


I used to force myself to finish every book I started. Then, just before the movies started coming out, I decided to re-read the Lord of the Rings. I had loved those books and re-read them many times as a teenager, and decided it was time re-visit them. It did not go well. After I had finished forcing myself to finish those books, I swore never to do that to myself again.
For me, Harry Potter. Though the first time through.
posted by Buttons Bellbottom at 11:02 AM on December 9, 2014


I think it has to do with a desire to establish reading (in the way that they read, not the other, lowbrow way that some other people read) as an elite, highbrow activity that establishes a person as a special kind of person: one of the cultural elect, a "literary person." I think that may be especially important for people who see themselves as highbrows but who don't have a credential like a PhD or an academic affiliation.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:12 AM on December 9, 2014 [1 favorite]


I guess concerns about "high-brow" and "low-brow" reading practices seem a little alien to me because learning to read was so much more about basic survival and not wanting to be socially marginalized when I started out learning to read in English. There may have been a little personal pride on the line for me, too, since the alternative to struggling through difficult texts for many years for me seemed to be giving little assholes on the playground an excuse to other me. I was always a prolific reader and an enthusiastic reader, but being honest with myself, I didn't really start comprehending what I read with any real depth of understanding until college. I could fake it, but in practice, I struggled so hard to keep my attention focused on what I was reading most of the time, I often couldn't remember what I had read in any detail afterwards. Don't know if ADHD or being an ESL kid was the bigger factor there, but forcing myself to plod ahead when I lost interest (which was always) made a big positive difference for me, so that's probably why I have a little bit of a bug up my butt on this topic.
posted by saulgoodman at 11:51 AM on December 9, 2014


Well, looking at the goodreads list, it seems like it's possible there are both books people don't finish because they don't have the time to concentrate, but which they still respect or think could be interesting, and maybe hope to return to eventually, and then those ones they just think are bad.

Basically, some books don't get finished because you don't want to waste time, and some because you just don't have enough time... (Though I'm sure people don't always agree which belong in which category).
posted by mdn at 12:05 PM on December 9, 2014


I like to read through to the end, but don't feel obliged to. The one big change in my reading habits came a few years back. Before I insisted on reading books one at a time, finishing one before starting another. Man that's a dumb way to do it.
posted by chavenet at 12:46 PM on December 9, 2014


I think the point where Juliet Lapidos undermines her own argument is where she starts talking about "trash" as though that's easily defined. I'm a voracious consumer of media and have often found that books other people whose opinions and tastes largely coincide with mine believe are essential are alienating to me and there's not necessarily any way for me to predict that in advance. I've had this happen over misogyny, racism, etc. as often as poor writing or something about the subject matter that rubbed me the wrong way (this is about dealing with your mom's death from cancer? thanks but no thanks, already been through that).

I think the only time I've ever had a hard time starting something and then had it turn out to be worthwhile was Homestuck, which I maintain is an important work of literature and a friend had talked to me about that it picks up after a certain point. More commonly I've pushed through books that other people think are "classics" and ended up wishing I had the time back, and I've also enjoyed books while reading that I ended up hating by the end, such as Harry Potter.

I stop reading things, and I wish I had stopped reading more things. I hated Tolkein, couldn't get past page 10 of Robert Jordan's first Wheel of Time book, immediately stopped Kerouac's On the Road, quit Gravity's Rainbow, hated and failed to see the point of both Catcher in the Rye and Catch-22, and gotten a lot out of various books that would not be classed as high art, sometimes because the terrible ways they set things up make understanding narrative structure and characterization so obvious in their failures.

I feel that the best things I can do for literature is to support authors is to read a lot of different things and talk to people about what we like and don't like so that everyone can filter more effectively, and to not get caught up in other people's ideas about how I should or shouldn't consume media.
posted by bile and syntax at 3:54 PM on December 9, 2014


I cant find the quote but Molly Ivins wrote something to the effect of "read widely, in areas you know nothing about, and you will be a better person". at the time I read this I was reading mostly classic sci fi (late teens) and it was starting to pall on me...so I started just grabbing stuff at random off the shelf: travel, humor, politics, biography, science, classic lit. Found pleasure in a lot of stuff I would not otherwise have sought out, and learned a certain mind-opening joy in reading new things.

I was also a completist who felt compelled to read serially and finish everything i picked up. I couldnt even look at magazines for a while because I felt like it somehow broke my flow.

The book that finally cured me of this, and taught me to not waste time on a book I was not enjoying, was the crushingly boring "Paperboy" by Henry Petroski. I have, however, certainly benefited personally from powering through some books that were not initially to my liking. Gatsby springs immediately to mind...or "Tent Life in Siberia" by George Kennan.
posted by hearthpig at 6:23 PM on December 9, 2014


I'm late to thIs thread, but I had the same experience as brak with one hundred years of solitude, I just gave up with 40 or so pages left.

I read here and there and don't make too much distinction on high- and low-brow, but it's not my main hobby.

However I've read all of Ecos novels, just about everything by Douglas Hofstadter, a huge chunk of David Foster Wallace (first one being infinite jest, and I didn't know what it was, I just wanted to read a long book). DFW isn't even a favorite author, and I really don't relate to him - go figure.
I've also read a lot of Vonnegut, more bukowski than I probably should, Hunter Thompson and Kerouac.

The completionist in me goes back to authors I like, and some, like Vonnegut, end up having a sort of orthogonal set of stories that is more than the individual sub plots of the books.

On top of that,I read like fifteen goddamn Dragonlance books this year for some reason. So I don't think I'm a particular snob.

The most recent thing I finished was Life of Pi, which would have been a very hard sell to me had I not seen the movie on the plane and was convinced there was a better sorry in there -- before I found out it was Ang Lee (and damn, do his movies suck, even if Pi was pretty).

I think people who "read" something in high school and have an opinion might want to consider reading it again. Everyone gets that they grow and change, but don't seem to consider their sophistication as a reader might have changed.

That being said, I hated every fucking word on every fucking page of Catcher in the Rye and honestly don't think it has any value being taught in schools. I don't understand why people ever liked it, let alone enough to torture kids with it for eternity. I will never read it again (though I think I've tried, like I do with bands I hate just to see if I've changed my mind -- like with radiohead, my lat favorite band of all time).

Gravity's rainbow is on my list of re-trys, but I honestly just couldn't get very far. Not good or bad, just... meh.

This thread inspired me to go try another couple pages of the top ranked "kindle unlimited" book.
It's bad. Like, the first (half) page uses the word 'homicide' 3 times, and a line about sleep being like sex, and" lately she hasn't gotten much of either". First fucking page.

I made it a little past that initially, and picking it up now I literally just passed out mid-sentence.

Anyway, no accounting for taste. I think Tanis Half-Elvin said that.
posted by lkc at 7:46 AM on December 10, 2014


I forced myself through "On the Road" but it did not give me a good return on my investment. I liked Catcher in the Rye, though, and it's a great example of a book I hated until the very end, when the image of the Catcher in the Rye actually got trotted out and the real meaning of the book finally came into focus, and it kind of felt like a beautiful revelation to me.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:10 AM on December 10, 2014 [1 favorite]


What makes us want to argue that our preferences should be universal?

Ask those in the "Apple" community!
posted by juiceCake at 3:19 PM on December 26, 2014


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