Not Finishing Books

Here’s a very funny piece on being a “serial book-unfinisher”. It made me laugh. I share the writer’s weird guilt over not finishing books – even if I have lost interest by a certain page (especially if it’s a long dern book, and I’ve put a lot of time into it). I am almost horrified at the thought of “unfinished books”. Horrified to the point of pathology.

And then … at the very end … came vindication in this sentence:

Don DeLillo’s Underworld was my great reading project of 1997. It was still my great reading project four years later. I gave up at page 745, only 72 pages from the end. You win, Don. The first 60 pages of that book are so beautiful I didn’t want to resent them by suffering through the last 72.

HA! Exactly, man, exactly!

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12 Responses to Not Finishing Books

  1. skinnydan says:

    Who knew it was a syndrome? My (proudest?) accomplishment in this sphere is getting up to page 925 of “Nicholas Nickelby” in my 960-odd page version of it. And stopping there. Pride made me want to finish, but boredom won over.

    (I think I went back about 10 years later & did get through the whole thing.)

  2. red says:

    HAHAHAHA

    I so admire you for putting it down after 925 pages. That is such a time commitment … You are a brave brave man to Just Say No.

  3. Just1Beth says:

    At South Road School, we teach the kids that it is ok to “abandon” a book. Sometimes you start a book, and you decide it is right for you for whatever reason- the language is too hard, or icky, or the topic is nothing that interests you after all. SO,it is ok to abandon a book once in a while. I wish a teacher had let me know this when I was a kid- it would certainly have saved years of book guilt!!

  4. Just1Beth says:

    oops- meant NOT right. DUh.

  5. dad says:

    Dearest: Finnegans Wake. Would the Complete Poems of Wordsworth count? love, dad

  6. red says:

    Dad: HAHAHAHAHAHA Wordsworth!

  7. skinnydan says:

    Beth,

    I might only argue that sometimes it’s worth fighting your way through tough language for a book with something important to say. Some books have tough words in them, and I think there’s value in pushing yourself to understand difficult concepts.

    Bearing in mind that tough words do not of themselves make books worth reading. If three years of graduate school taught me anything, it’s that having a PhD doesn’t mean you can write worth a damn.

  8. red says:

    I know I’m glad that I read “hard” books before I was really ready. I got my way through all of Oliver Twist at the age of 11. Huh? But my only impetus was that I had seen and loved the movie. I knew I loved the story, so I struggled through it.

    But in terms of Beth’s point: sometimes you just don’t like something. For whatever reason. Maybe you don’t like the writing, or the story, or you just don’t CARE. It took me about 400 pages of Underworld to realize: I do not CARE about these people. I cared about the people in the first 60 pages … but … then? Where did they go? Lost in the turgid prose.

    My instinct to keep plowing through (even though life is short and time is precious) was very odd to me. What would be so awful of just admitting: I do not like this book that everyone says is the greatest book ever written. I do not like it!

  9. skinnydan says:

    I do not like this book I read
    I would not read it on my steed
    I would not read it in my car
    I could not read it in a bar

    You get no argument from me on stopping a book that’s not doing it for you. My usual guide is if I fall asleep over the same passage more than three times, I’m really not into the book. Likewise, if the thing sits there on a table and you keep thinking “I should get to it” and you don’t, it’s time to return it to the library.

    I did that with a book on Tammany on Sunday. I finally realized (two days overdue, naturally) that I was simply not going to get back to it. And back it went, compromised only by the book sale the library was having. I dropped off one, took back four, including a biography of queen victoria.

    When the books are a dollar a bag (and the librarian asked if I wanted to fill up my bag a bit more, as there was still room) you don’t ask too many questions.

  10. Chai-rista says:

    I have an almost sacred philosophy built around reading only things that appeal to me. The synchronicity of it brings the right books to hand at exactly the right time. So, if I get 2 chapters in, or 22 chapters in, and suddenly it is more work than pleasure, I whole heartedly chuck it. This makes room in my reading life for books that please me and instruct me in ways I’m ready to hear. I sum it up with this quote:

    Read what you like because you like it, and never pretend to admire what you do not. – – paraphrase of British philosopher Leslie Stephen (father of Virginia Woolf)

  11. Dano says:

    Sheila:
    Have I told you lately that I love you? Of course I spend too much time rearranging my books; but the prospect of putting some in boxes, out of sight and ready readability, rather crushes me. So I’m more of a mind to help my house fulfill its arts-and-crafts destiny and design some built-in shelves.

    Also: Magazines. Those wooden standups from IKEA are great, but most perfectbound periodicals and ‘zines also look good in a bookcase. National Geographics, NEST and Utne Readers…

  12. Dano says:

    oops. posted to the wrong books thread. BUT I do need my bookcases for the books I’ve only half-finished…

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