I thought this was going to be a piece in which I gleefully recount my exploits as a book quitter. I say “gleefully” because I heartily advocate reading the books we want to read.
Outside the context of school or work requirements, reading isn’t a responsibility to anyone but oneself. So no one is obligated to finish a book or provide an explanation for why they didn’t. By all means, feel badly if you quit on hope and humanity. Feel badly for being hateful or impatient or selfish (to the extent that feeling badly inspires you to do better). But feeling badly about not finishing a book (or about what you read)? No. Full stop.
So there I was, all fired up, marching up and down my imaginary battlefield, brandishing my imaginary spear and, for whatever reason, imagining myself clothed in chain mail and a metal helmet. And then … a funny thing happened: I looked over my reading data and realized, Oh. I haven’t actually quit on many books this year. How inconvenient it is when empirical evidence contradicts what we want to believe. Ahem.
I stand by my message. It’s just that my lack of quitting has come as a surprise. At times this year, it has felt as if I was abandoning books with, well, abandon. Continue reading “I thought I was book quitter until I checked the stats”
The bookish interwebs are buzzing today with fun and funny tributes to National Book Lovers Day, celebrated on Aug. 9 each year.
