Reading Discipline
Just finish the damn book
There is a type of writing that exists to address personal failings: the productivity tips written by chronic procrastinators, the confident self-help books written by nervous wrecks. These writers seem to believe that if they incant the right words they'll convince themselves to put them into practice.
Oliver Burkeman, a man who turned a column gently mocking self-help into a successful career writing similar books, wrote recently about how he gets out of a rut in a way that sounded suspiciously like someone trying to write their way out of a rut.1
Does this kind of self-propaganda actually work? Let’s find out.
The following article was written as a way of persuading myself to focus on reading no more than a couple of books at a time rather than scattering my attention on lots of half-finished ones. Reading, in this instance, being a synecdoche for all the things in life we optimistically start without having the time, desire, or attention to finish.
How has it come to this?
How have I accumulated twenty-odd books on my e-reader that are between 10%-40% read? They are a mix of fiction and non-fiction, classic and modern, simple and challenging, but I am resisting finishing any one of them. This isn't to mention the physical books and library books that pile up on the bedside table, most of which haven't been opened in weeks.
It has become a kind of a joke to buy more books than you can read. The Japanese even have a word for it, Tsundoku. For most people, book accumulation is a harmless form of consumerism. Better spend your money on books than gadgets. But I wonder if all these unfinished books aren't stressing me out on some unconscious level.
The Zeigarnick effect suggests that each unfinished task leaves an attentional residue, meaning we can't concentrate fully on the task at hand because there is a nagging feeling that we need to complete something else.
Silicon Valley guru, Naval Ravikant advocates this kind of buffet approach to literature and dips into books whenever he fancies. I admire his calm authority but can’t get into a flow state reading like this and become like Buridan's ass, starving because I am incapable of choosing between two equally delicious bales of hay.
Ravikant advises that to get a love for reading you should read books you love. This is the argument that has led people to promote the Harry Potter series to kids in order to get them into reading, kindling the desire to turn pages. Others, like Harold Bloom, believe Harry Potter undermines a love of reading. Kids become brain-dead through cliché and can't connect with poetry. Literature should be challenging, it should require effort, so finishing a book becomes an achievement.2
The pandemic made people aware of the shortness of life and the need to make the most of what time remains. If you were told you had a year to live, would you go for literary escapism or greatness? Even if your life isn't immediately threatened, it is always going to be short in terms of the number of books that you could read. If I read one or two classics a year for the next forty years, I'll have still only scratched the surface of the canon by the time I die.
How much reading would you be doing in your ideal life anyway? The average American spends seven hours a day looking at screens. Hardly a life worth living.
The book I'm furthest into (66%) is trite, dull, and badly written. It's by an author I've enjoyed in the past so I don't know what they were thinking with this one. Having managed to get through most of it I may as well just grit my teeth and get it over with. But it's unlikely to get any better. Why waste any more time?
One of the best arguments for finishing books comes from Vladimir Nabokov who told students that a great reader is a rereader. The first read of a book is necessarily incomplete because you can't see how it fits together as a whole. Maybe with the book I’m not enjoying there’ll be a big payoff at the end that pulls into focus the previous pages.
By following through and finishing a book you learn the difference between your book-reading intentions and your book-reading outcomes. You come to appreciate what it is that makes a book bad. Maybe you'll make a better choice next time. This is why I advocate — in theory, at least — the discipline of only having one or two books at a time. To start lots of different books and then leave them in a purgatorial half-read state is to live in denial. Select a book and read it.
After this huge image of a tower of babel made of books, there are some ideas that might help us me do that.
How to finish a book
Read it quickly
The unconscious is amazing and can grasp a lot of what you skim without needing to have the words echoed in your mind. Skim the pages and see if anything sticks out. Stop taking the book so seriously, don't take notes, just read it with lightness and find something that grabs your attention.
Read only the odd-numbered pages
Apparently, Marshall McLuhan used to ignore the even-numbered pages as a way of encouraging his mind to be creative and fill in the gaps.
Start in the middle
Dr. Johnson did this and I find it a lot more fun than having to listen to all the throat-clearing and excuse-making that goes on at the beginning of most books.
Only start what you're willing to endure
There was a literary editor who would book himself into a seven-day transatlantic cruise to read Ulysses uninterruptedly. Unless you have time and space, certain books are always going to be a challenge.
Join a book group
Some of the most challenging books I’ve read have been helped by being for my book group.
Read it out loud (or listen to the audiobook)
This is, I've found, the best way to overcome any sense of resistance to archaic syntax. Laura and I battled through War and Peace by reading it out loud and loved the experience.
Read the book backward
I sometimes like to try and piece together a book like it was Christopher Nolan’s Memento by reading it last chapter first and then the previous one until I get to the beginning.
Just commit to one page
This is the idea of Tiny Habits, reading one page and giving it all your attention. One page at a time is enough.
Don't just read at bedtime
I tend to use reading as an avenue to sleep and want something that allows me to escape. By reading earlier in the evening you can stop it from becoming so utilitarian.
Remember that you'll be dead
Life is short and books are long. It is not surprising that we start more books than we finish. How could we do otherwise? Imagine that you have six days to live, savour the words.
Interview with Camilla Grudova
To help me become a better reader, the writer Camilla Grudova graciously answered my questions about her reading habits and her favourite books.
Read my interview with Camilla Grudova
Here’s the quote from Burkeman:
It strikes me that a lot of advice on how to get things done is borderline useless, at least for me personally, because I'm so rarely in the right frame of mind to apply it. Either life is going well, in which case I'm trundling happily through my projects, making steady progress, and with no particular need for complex new productivity systems, or schemes for accomplishing my goals. Or else – and this happens a little more frequently than I care to admit – it's a bad day, I'm feeling listless or miserable, and the trouble is motivating myself to do anything constructive at all. And on those days, the idea of implementing any sort of "productivity system" or "planning philosophy" or anything similar is clearly wildly, preposterously over-ambitious. I'm stuck in a rut, and the only thing I'm in the market for is some way to get out.
I am always impressed by my friend Chris Kohler's breadth of reading. He keeps up with the Nobel contenders as well as classics like Dante. Check out his latest newsletter here.
I don't understand why reading entire books is supposed to be a virtue. Isn't it pretty damn good to read half a book? Then you know much more about the subject than when you started reading. Probably you won't know twice as much if you force yourself to finish the book.
I think we all should read more half books!
I've always found it quite easy to abandon a book I am not enjoying reading or am not interested in what happens next. As you say, life is short, why waste it on a book that's not grabbing you? You wouldn't sit through a 7 hour film if you were not interested in it after 45 minutes.