Finishing a book

I don't finish every book I start, because my Day Job is selecting books for a very specific purpose, and if a book is not fulfilling that purpose, at the moment I realize it, there is no point in continuing to read. I'd be wasting my employer's money if I went on. I will admit to having stuck with a few books that were off the menu way beyond that point of (getting) no return. I excuse this on the basis of its adding to my education about what's being published out there, but in fact, it's probably simply more a way to goof off while looking busy (if one can ever look busy if one's job is primarily the reading of books).

At home it's a different story. Because I read so much professionally, when I read recreationally, I am extremely selective. I only have so much reading time left in me, and I want to use it wisely. This does not mean I limit myself to a certain kind of book. I'm as likely to read serious history, Kant, a James Bond novel or a Superman comic book in my limited private reading time, depending on my mood. One thing I won't do, however, is spend time on a book that is not doing the job for me.

Tim Parks takes this discussion a step further. To him, not reading a book because you're not enjoying it is a given, as it should be. He's more interested in books that you enjoy very much, and nevertheless do not feel compelled to read them to the end. In fact, he blames the structure of novels for the very existence of endings, many of which do not do justice to what preceded them. Take Huckleberry Finn, for instance, which famously goes off the track when Tom Sawyer shows up. Wouldn't we be better off just stopping reading at that point?

To put a novel down before the end, then, is simply to acknowledge that for me its shape, its aesthetic quality, is in the weave of the plot and, with the best novels, in the meshing of the writing style with that weave. Style and plot, overall vision and local detail, fascinate together, in a perfect tangle. Once the structure has been set up and the narrative ball is rolling, the need for an end is just an unfortunate burden, an embarrassment, a deplorable closure of so much possibility.

One big problem with endings, Parks claims, is that so many of them are so terrible. This is a great essay about the nature of literature: Why Finish Books?