Exploring The Morality Of Not Reading A Book Cover-To-Cover
In this edition of “Writer to Reader,” author Joshilyn Jackson looks at several options the reluctant reader can take once a book seems doomed for reshelving.
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Have you ever picked up a book, started reading and found that you simply couldn’t keep reading? Whether it is boring, full of jargon or just not your taste, sometimes a book cannot manage to keep your interest.
For best-selling author Joshilyn Jackson, it tends to be Russian novels.
“I can’t take even one more gentile female suicide caused by all those sad ‘lady feelings’ none of us weak-willed double-X’s can seem to manage in nineteenth-century Russia,” she says.
In this edition of “Writer to Reader,” Jackson looks at several options the reluctant reader can take once a book seems doomed for reshelving.
The first and most simple method is to stop reading. However, Jackson argues that if you decide to continue, you may be rewarded with a book that turns out to have a good second half. The act of soldiering through can show respect for the author and, if the book never gets better, it builds fortitude.
For Jackson, sometimes it isn’t such a conscious decision to continue reading.
“If a book just can’t hold me, at a certain point I set it down and I simply forget to ever pick it up again,” she says. Jackson contends this is especially easy because she often has multiple books cracked open at the same time.
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