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I have many friends who are extremely proficient readers.
They key word there is ‘extremely’. They read a lot.
I read a lot myself, but one thing I don’t do that they nearly all seem to is finish most of the books I start.
To a lot of people, that sounds like a weakness, that somehow if you ‘give up’ on a book it’s a failing in your character.
It’s actually a strength. Here’s why.
How many books, magazine articles, newspapers, blogs, Wikipedia entries and God knows what else do you read, and finish, that add value to your life? That provide you with even one piece of information that is useful?
That you even liked?
Even if you’re a very selective reader (and I am, too), smart money says it’s less than 10 per cent. If it’s as high as 20 per cent - and I’m talking about everything you read here - then you either have an extremely good eye, or a pretty low expectation on what constitutes value.
Similar logic can be applied to films and even music, although your hit rate will be higher, simply because both of these mediums provide us with a preview option through trailers, MTV, radio airplay, etc.
With the written word, there is no preview. You might read a review of a given book that ultimately leads to you buying it, but that’s an entirely different set of words. The book itself is still to come.
The preview of the book comes in the first 30-50 pages, or the first few chapters.
After that, if you’re not either
1. Hooked, or
2. Genuinely learning something
Then stop reading. You owe the book, and the author, a big fat zero. There is nothing productive, beneficial or (worse) righteous about finishing a book simply because you started it. Who gains from that action? Nobody.
Not you, because you’ve just wasted time and resources doing something you’re not enjoying, but have decided to follow through to the end on the remote chance it might get a lot better (it won’t) or simply because you feel guilty about quitting.
Not the author, because by the end of the book you’ll have grown to hate them, and the negative impact this will have on passing commentary you make to your friends could seriously dig into their future sales, whereas if you got out early enough, you’ll have forgotten all about it in a day or two.
And not the book itself, because it’s an inanimate object and doesn’t really care if you read it from cover-to-cover or dowse it in petrol and throw it alight off the edge of Beachy Head.
No book in history has sucked for 500 pages only to pay off massively in the last ten. More often than not, the good stuff is at the beginning and the end. If the author hasn’t grabbed your attention pretty much from the start, they have failed. And need to be punished.
Reading in and of itself is an essential part of personal growth, but only if you’re reading the right things. How do you know what that is? The harder it is for you to get through a given tome, or the more you find yourself reading the same lines and paragraphs over and over again, then the more chance there is that that book is not for you. How many times have you heard somebody say, “I couldn’t put it down!” or “I read it in one sitting.” That’s what it should always be like. Otherwise, casual reading becomes too much like homework, like a chore, or another job, and that’s a big negative.
If we assume that only 20 per cent of what you read is worthwhile - and you’ll have your own definitions on that word, but generally it should be taken to mean something you either enjoyed or learned from (without suffering in the process) - then if you cut your ‘finish’ rate from what I’d imagine is now about 90-95 per cent (nobody finishes everything) to 40-50 per cent you would:
1. Feel a lot better about your choices, and
2. Have a lot more free time to utilise in other pursuits (or other books)
Now, I’m not for a second saying that the only worthwhile reading material is stuff with small words in big fonts (although fluff always has its place; again, if the pages are flying by, then whatever the content is you’re getting a value of sorts). I’m actually saying the opposite - that most, if not all of the words in whatever you are reading should matter.
If they don’t, and after fifty pages you find yourself praying for death, then put the book down and get the hell out of Dodge. Or start reading something else. Make not finishing books and articles a big part of your life and you’ll see the improvements almost immediately.
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