I’m just now starting How to talk about books you haven’t read, and I’m reminded of a powerful conversation I had with my senior thesis advisor . . . a conversation which startles friends today.
I was doing my thesis on rank-and-file worker movements in towns that voted for the Nazis. I had a 40 book bibliography and I was falling massively behind in my reading. My advisor had been frustrated until a thought hit him, and he asked: “Kip, are you trying to read these books in their entirety?” “Well . . . yeah.”
“Let me explain something: there are maybe ten books in the whole wide world that deserve to be read the whole way through.”
Lots of people carry lots of guilt about that one . . . how many of us in the design/web/media professions read all of Blink after all?
The other dirty little reading secret is that not only do I selectively read (non-fiction) books, but I regularly bail on fiction books after 50 pages or so. I learned this from Steve Leveen’s The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life, which argues that there are so many great books you’ll never live long enough to read anyway, there’s no point in forcing yourself to complete ones you’re not digging. The rule: if a book doesn’t have you totally enthralled by 50 pages, dump it, move on, next.
The author of that book is the CEO of Levenger, a nifty store with tools ‘for the serious reader’. In addition to great lap desks (B&N ripped it off from Levenger and the Levenger ones are infinitely better), they have a bunch of tips about keeping reading journals, the virtues of marking up books (and a system for your marks!), and I just discovered that they’ve added a reading site.
[...] Fun on so many levels. This seems to be the book to enjoy reading, at least among my little circle of reading friends, and finally someone who didn’t dig it. It also validates, the dirty little reading secret and rule that you shouldn’t kill yourself trying to finish a book that just isn’t working for you. [...]