The joy of leaving things unfinished

I am a voracious reader. Always have been. There was a big swath of time in my childhood and early adolescence where the answer to “where’s Janet?” inevitably was “in her room reading.” The reading habit didn’t change as I aged, but the locations, and topics, certainly did. I read all sorts of things while growing up, including teen fiction (now they call it “Young Adult,” like we need our kids to grow up faster), classics, history, even horror. When my boys were younger a lot of the books revolved around them, of course, and as they grew I often would read what they were reading. There is a lot of simply wonderful writing for children and young adults out there–you can’t get much better than Moo, Baa, La La La!

These days I have more time to read (although there is never enough time), and I consume books in as many ways as I can. I read e-books, listen to audiobooks, and even read actual, non-digital, hold-them-in-my-hands books. I get stacks of them from the library, borrow them from friends and family, and at times even buy them (although as noted in a previous post there are piles of books all over the house so I buy them only if they aren’t available at the library or to support local authors. Or to support non-local authors that I really like. Or because they look really good and I make an impulse purchase. Or so I can give them as gifts. Oh, who am I kidding, I buy way too many books.)

I am not terribly picky, either–I read in all genres. I still like to read what my sons are reading. I love spy stories, history (especially World War II), and tomes about codebreaking (both fiction and non-fiction). I enjoy cozy mysteries in small doses (I have to intersperse them with stories that are a little less, well, predictable). I read romances (yep, I admit it), classics, comedy, and travelogues. I read books on parenting adult children, biographies, military history, and occasionally psychology (generally only if recommended by a friend or the Wall Street Journal). I even have read books categorized as “literary fiction,” whatever that is. (My personal view is that books that are gloomy and hard to follow fall into this category, although that’s probably not the accepted definition.) But one thing I won’t read is…the rest of a book that fails to capture my interest. That’s right–sometimes I don’t finish books.

Horrors! It took me years to give myself permission to put down a book without finishing it. It goes against everything I was taught, and even my own personal standards: finish what you start, don’t give up, the story might actually get better. (In the case of Tale of Two Cities, of course, that is true–the first hundred pages or so were a slog, but after that it was one of the best books I’ve ever read.) But when I’m not interested in the book, it sucks the joy out of reading–and then what is the point? So sometimes, I stop before the end. Just this week I didn’t finish two books in a row, which is pretty unusual, as I’m usually better at picking out books I like. One of the books I didn’t finish says right on the back cover that it is “a fictional tour de force,” so I persevered more than halfway before I gave up. I’m somewhat afraid that not finishing something that shows such great skill makes me a person of little substance, but finally I decided I’d rather read something I enjoy than be considered erudite. (I later realized that there were no author or reader blurbs on this book’s cover, so that tour de force designation likely came from the publisher…make of that what you will.)

No matter how much time I spend reading (or listening), my to-read list is growing exponentially faster than I can check books off. (I’m not organized enough to just have one list, actually. There’s the Goodreads list, and the phone list, and the pictures I take of books that look good, and the little slips of paper shoved in my purse and piled on my desk, and the emails I send myself…the point is, there’s a lot of stuff I want to read.) No one is grading me (fortunately) or judging me on my literary choices (and if anyone IS judging me, I probably don’t want to be friends with them anyway). So I’m embracing the freedom of not finishing books that I DON’T enjoy, which actually brings me extra joy! It also frees up time for better books, so be sure to send me your recommendations. I’ll add them to my list.