War and Peas
Why Finish Every Book You Start?
Some people feel obligated to finish reading every book they begin. Once they pick up a book, even if it’s hundreds of pages long and makes them want to scream with boredom, they will get to that last page if it kills them.
I am not one of those people.
It’s not that I don’t love books. One reason I worked in a public library for two decades was so I could read any book I wanted. If it wasn’t in our collection, it could be ordered from outside the system.
To this day, I make use of this service so often that the reference librarian in charge of ordering hard-to-find books from other libraries has joked that she wants to hide under her desk whenever she sees me coming. But even after she’s moved heaven and earth to locate a book in some itty bitty library in Nowhere, Pennsylvania and it has made the long journey across the state and into my hands, if it doesn’t grab me by chapter two? Back it goes!
I never feel compelled to finish a book. In fact, I rarely even feel inclined to finish a book. I will only keep reading if a book is so great that I can’t put it down.
A library patron once told me that I absolutely had to read The Poisonwood Bible.
