Reading — 2.0

A few weeks ago a friend loaned me a book to read. Claire mentioned that she’s like to read it and after I finished, she read it. We just returned the book. I finished the book in 2 or 3 days and Claire did the same.

But that often isn’t the case — we both have different criteria for books…. in the past, I pretty much always finished a book that I started and Claire often didn’t. Well, of course that got me to thinking. Should you finish every book you start?

I have a friend that says he always reads a book to the end, no matter what, because he’d feel like a quitter if he didn’t. I think Claire’s philosophy is that life is too short to read bad books. Obviously there’s no right answer to the question, but here’s some of my thoughts, and I have to admit that in the last few years, my view has changed a bit.

My original thinking was that if you give up on a book in the middle because  you don’t like a character, plot development, or something else, you may miss out — your opinion might change if you finish the book. Your opinion might not change, but you’ll never know if you don’t finish it.

But — things change…. I’ve gotten older and I’m more likely to abandon a book if it isn’t working for me. Reading is a personal experience and it shouldn’t be a chore. I’ve also become a little more particular about what I read — just because a book is on the best seller list or everyone’s talking about it doesn’t any longer inspire me to want to read it. I’ve kind of settled in to reading things that truly interest me. Someone once said if you read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking, or something like that. So I just read what interests me — I’m not concerned with other people’s opinions. 

I appreciate the fact that the author took the trouble to write the whole book and maybe I do owe it to that author to read the whole book before judging it. I guess I agree that I shouldn’t judge the book without finishing it, but there’s no reason I have to Judge it — if I’m not enjoying it, I just quit reading.
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