Book Abandonment Issues
Julia Keller of The Chicago Tribune wrote a fantastic article about the connection readers feel with books, and why it’s so hard to abandon an unfinished book. She points out that turning off a TV show, walking out of a movie theater, and walking out of a play somehow make you feel less guilty than abandoning a book you just can’t get into.
I know exactly what she means. I have been trying to get into The Ruins on and off for about four months now. I never finished reading Stephen King’s The Stand because I read it when I was eleven-years-old and I was bored. I also never finished King’s short story The Sun Dog (from Four Past Midnight) because I was eleven-years-old and too scared to turn the next page. I never finished The Great Gatsby, even though it was assigned for my tenth-grade English class. And I have a biography of Dave Grohl (lead singer of Foo Fighters) that I put down three years ago and never bothered to pick back up.
All of them make me feel guilty. The author has her own list included in the article, and I’d bet every avid reader has a similar list of books they just couldn’t finish. She points out,
To abandon a book feels all wrong. If you do it, you look around warily, half-expecting to see your middle-school English teacher in the corner, giving you a gravely disappointed glare.
That’s only the half of it, really. While you do feel guilty in that “I didn’t do my homework” kind of way, not being able to finish a book has a stronger effect, at least on me. You know that elated feeling you get when you finish a good book? I get the exact opposite when I think of the books I never finished - I feel like I let myself down. The author seems to feel similarly:
Certain books just don’t grab you. So you let them go. But they never really go away, those cast-aside books, because their forlorn covers haunt your sleep. And sometimes, late at night, you could swear you hear them offering a sad little plea: “Can’t we try it just one more time?”
I have a hope that the Try a Sample feature of the Kindle Store will prevent me from starting books I don’t want to finish. At least I’ll be able to sample the writer’s style and a little of the story before spending money on a book.
You can read the entire article (which mentions the Kindle) on ChicagoTribune.com.
