Finishing a Book is Optional
There is a cognitive bias called the sunk cost fallacy. We hesitate to abandon a strategy or a plan because we already have invested time, money, energy in it, even if dropping that specific action would be more helpful for us. With the sunk cost fallacy in mind, we would gain more if we do not finish a book we do not enjoy.
Time is non-regenerable and is not worth spending our time on boring or bad books. Usually, after 50-100 pages, I can guesstimate if I want to finish the book I am reading. Furthermore, some books are nothing more than glorified blog posts. I skim through such books once I understand the main idea, and I do not necessarily complete them.
“You Cannot Step into the Same River Twice”
As Heraclitus remarked, we can’t cross the same river twice, as we changed, and the river changed. Similarly, we cannot read the same book twice. The insights we gain from a book change with each rereading.
Adam Grant says in his Originals book:
Déjà vu occurs when we encounter something new, but it feels as if we’ve seen it before. Vuja de is the reverse — we face something familiar, but we see it with a fresh perspective that enables us to gain new insights into old problems.
Books we found impressive as teenagers metamorphose as entirely different books in our adult years. We changed, we have other perspectives regarding the book’s topic, we experience vuja de.
The Prepared Environment
I have books in the living room, books in each bathroom, books on my desk, and books in my bag. I also read between three or five books at a time. In this way, there is always a book for my mood. If I have more time, I can settle into a non-fiction book. If I feel exhausted, I will enjoy a light read.
Marginalia
Marginalia, or taking notes on the margins of a book, is a disputed topic. Some would cry Sacrilege! Others see marginalia as a required method for understanding the reading materials, an effective way of transferring knowledge from author to reader. What I do is that I mark the corners of the pages where I underlined text passages or where I scribbled notes.
Input versus Output
As to reading, there is little value to gain in focusing on the output (e.g., I will read 50-100 books in one year). I could easily read three short books in one week or barely finish an enormous book in one month. By setting a fixed number of books per year, I might hurry through short books, racing to achieve a goal. And that takes from the pleasure of reading.
“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”
― Mortimer J. Adler
Reading Recommendations
I am wary of recommending books. What I find exciting and compelling, others could find dull and boring. Then, reading is context-depending. Some books would be tremendous at one stage in our life and perfectly ignorable at another stage of our life. Thus, even if somebody recommends me a book today, unfortunately, I might truly absorb that book’s essence later in my life … or never. We all have our peculiar reading tastes that we don’t need to defend — de gustibus.
From from fantasy to autobiographies, from mystery novels to poetry, from social movements to psychology, books allow us to live multiple lives in just one.
The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.
― Alan Bennett