When to Stop Reading a Book

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/24/edge-closing-the-book-on-a-bad-read/

by mhb • 17 years ago

31 31 17 years ago

mhb• 17 years ago

Interesting ebook effect: Having an e-book reader has made Ms. Wendell more ruthless. "I'm holding 100+ books on one device. If one isn't floating my boat, I can move on to something else by pressing one button," she points out.

DougBTX• 17 years ago

The reddit of books? Start reading one article, but if it doesn't suit, or has too many pages, skip right on to the next article.

The fun bit is that she has paid for said 100 books. Amazon, on a financial level, could be quite happy for her to not read them - it saves time before she buys another.

edw5193• 17 years ago

We go to Border's or Barnes & Noble once a week, have coffee and dessert and bring a pile of books into the cafe. I read Chapter One of each book. If I like it, I buy it. If not, I put it back.

yan3• 17 years ago

As much as I like Amazon, I still end up going back to B&N and Borders. It's really hard to replicate the feeling of browsing through a bookshelf of new books on a topic that interests you and flipping through some of them. Even though the Borders recent web interface facelift try to come closer to this, anything on a monitor is just not the same.

edw5193• 17 years ago

Also, if you're going out anyway for coffee and dessert, you might as well do it somewhere where you can put a few books on the table.

scott_s2• 17 years ago

That's my feeling, but after not finding the books I want for several months of casually going to stores, I just ordered them on Amazon.

ChaitanyaSai• 17 years ago

Kindle now offers sample chapters from (some/most?) books. I find that really useful

tocomment• 17 years ago

I did that once and they told me I had too many books and they took them back and put them away. It kinda hurt my dignity :-(

edw5193• 17 years ago

"It kinda hurt my dignity :-("

Yea, the Sales Prevention Department has a way of doing that.

vollmond• 17 years ago

What to do for the situation of actively liking a book, but getting bogged down because it's (for example) huge.

With a series, you can take a break between installments. I read the first Otherland book several months ago, and I'm just now feeling ready to pick up book 2. What about this situation in the middle of a book? Put it back on the shelf to finish later, or cut your losses and move on?

brg• 17 years ago

This has worked for me.

Decide now on a chapter that you haven't reached yet as a goal. Force yourself to take a break when that milestone is reached and read something else in the intermission. If you still feel its worth the effort to finish the book, go back and pick up where you left off.

yan3• 17 years ago

If I'm reading something huge that is seeming to go on forever, I usually put it away for a few days to a week and read a smaller, lighter book in between.

scott_s2• 17 years ago

I did something similar when I read "The Powerbroker," which is 1300 dense pages. I was fascinated by it, and I learned an enormous amount of information, but I knew from the beginning that it was at least a four month commitment. (Most of my reading gets done in short intervals at breakfast and lunch.)

The last time I had read a book of similar size, density and importance, I had dropped it for six months - and that book ended up becoming one of my favorites. (For the record, it was "The Powers That Be.") I wanted to avoid doing that, so I just had a policy where I read a lighter book at home, and read the denser book when I was out. It worked great.

pmichaud• 17 years ago

I do this ruthlessly. I skim the first part of many articles, and do the same for books, which I have in almost constant supply from amazon.

I wrote a system for myself (called Mnemo) that I used to catalog and cross reference stuff. I can tag things, and search by author, keyword, whatever. This is useful not only for going back through a topic I'm interested in, but also because while I'm reading I can ask myself constantly: would I put this in Mnemo or am I spinning my wheels?

Maybe I'll release Mnemo and see if it works for other people.

pingu• 17 years ago

Maybe I'll release Mnemo and see if it works for other people.

Please do that ... It sounds pretty interesting.

queensnake• 17 years ago

How's it different from delicious.com?

TheSOB882• 17 years ago

Excellent quote: "If I'm reading a truly, actively bad book, I'll throw it out," he says. His wife will protest, but he points out that he's doing a public service: "If I don't throw it out, someone else might read it."

I think people should do stuff like this more often. Like YAGNI with real-life objects. You just ain't gonna need most of the crap in your house.

mahmud• 17 years ago

"Bad" in what sense and according to whom?

Chernyshevsky's "What's To Be Done" is easily one of the worst pieces of literature in history, but that didn't stop Lenin from being inspired by it. The book's major claim to fame is the infamous list of influential people who loved it, and not in that ironic "so bad it's good" way either.

TheSOB882• 17 years ago

According to the reader. People seem to feel guilty if they don't want to read some book. They shouldn't.

terpua• 17 years ago

I stopped on page 1.

seasoup• 17 years ago

Just read your book quickly, before Amazon makes the choice to stop reading it for you!

jodrellblank• 17 years ago

"Don't eat your greens, just move straight on to dessert. Only read books you find easy and enjoyable. What could possibly be wrong with that?"

shard• 17 years ago

I've come across technical books which communicate their ideas in ways that don't fit me. Sometimes it's the way they structure examples, sometimes it's just that their notation goes against the way I've learned it, and I have to constantly retranslate what I just read. These things make the books neither easy nor enjoyable, so I look for alternatives which suit me better.

timwiseman• 17 years ago

When it comes to technical books, I agree with you. I have pored over more than one dreadfully boring technical/scientific book because I needed the information.

When it comes to fiction, I cannot disagree more with your implied sentiment. The primary point of fiction is to entertain, and if I do not enjoy the book, then I am certainly not being entertained.

Some books come with side effects. Some fiction books push an agenda or try to make a political point (1984 comes to mind), but then it is the author's task to both convince me their point is right and keep me sufficiently entertained to keep me reading. Also, some books are supposed to help expand your "cultural horizons" and can increase your vocabulary or introduce you to interesting ideas.

But I find that a bad reason to read fiction. If entertaining fiction comes with a good side effect, then that is an added bonus. If it is the side effect itself that I am truly looking for then I am better off taking it in its concentrated form. If I want interesting new ideas, I will sit down with a book purely on the subject I am looking into.

In short, it is little problem if nonfiction is boring, but fiction which is boring has failed its primary purpose entirely.

mrlebowski• 17 years ago

Which book did you guys stop reading recently ?

I was reading "Fooled by randomness" and just could not make myself go beyond the ~25% mark..!

ghiotion• 17 years ago

When to stop reading a Web page. When there's a next button at the bottom.

wanderingstan• 17 years ago

Our tendency to keep reading even bad books is also (to some degree) a manifestation of the "endowment effect" documented in Dan Ariely's "Predictable Irrational": Once you've forked over money for a book, you value it more simply because it's now yours. Even if it sucks, you'll have an easier time convincing yourself that it is an Important Book.

That said, I think there are cases where you should plow through a book you don't (at first) enjoy. E.g. when a book comes highly recommended by people you trust, or from an author who has delivered in the past. This is especially true for older books that were written for less attention-sapped audiences and have cultural gaps that take getting used to. I'm thinking of Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov." It was highly reccomended by friends with good taste, and I had enjoyed some of his shorter works. Still, it was incredibly slow getting started. But once I had ingested the multi-layered background and got a grip on Russian peasant culture, was one of the more amazing books I've ever read. And could not have been otherwise if not for the investment required to get into it.

Radix• 17 years ago

Another example is Les Miserables. That book is fantastic. I'm at a loss for adjectives. I haven't really read anything since, but I loved that book, and I loved Jean Valjean, and hated Thenardier.

But the the book takes a little while to start, then just when it does it changes characters, and Hugo takes forever to describe things which have very little to do with the story or characters. So I bored reading when Hugo suddenly began building a new story arc at the height of the last one. Even still the ending was tearful.

Haaah, I wish I loved reading as I did when I was a boy.

bentoner• 17 years ago

I agree Les Miserables is worth finishing, and I eventually did finish it, about two years after starting.

It was my "gym book." I'd read it while on the cardio machines at the gym, and only allowed myself to read it there, so as to provide encouragement to go and to stay longer.

(This was at Caltech where reading at the gym is normal: holders for books are provided.)

balding_n_tired• 17 years ago

From Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, entry for April 19, 1773 (Courtesy of gutenberg.org):

Mr. Elphinston talked of a new book that was much admired, and asked Dr. Johnson if he had read it. JOHNSON. 'I have looked into it.' 'What (said Elphinston,) have you not read it through?' Johnson, offended at being thus pressed, and so obliged to own his cursory mode of reading, answered tartly, 'No, Sir, do _you_ read books _through_?

When to Stop Reading a Book

Related Stories