Unfinished Business or The Pleasure of Completion

I tend to become slightly obsessive when it comes to finishing endeavors I’ve started. This does not apply to the long term (unfortunately), only the immediate future. To put it another way: if I stop working on this now, I will never complete it. Another caveat is that it tends to be true when the activity is something I enjoy. Not all that long ago (a decade give or take a couple of years), I would spend anywhere from 6 to 12 hours straight creating and recording music. In more recent years it might have more to do with code (Late Hours, je vous présente WordPress. WordPress, Late Hours).

And of course, you always have to finish your books. I have a strong tendency to view new chapters as built-in bathroom break reminders and not as logical points at which to say “okay, time to let ‘er rest a bit”. I am not (let’s be clear) claiming to be a voracious reader. There are dry spells and then fervent rushes, with the droughts lasting months and the hot times being two or three books. But even if it it’s just not possible to pull an all-nighter to reach “The End”, I still have a very strong desire to finish that book sometime in the immediate future. It is rare that I get more than a few pages into a book and then not complete it. So this AskMeFi question was new territory for me. It basically boils down to “How do you pick books to read?”. But there is also discussion about knowing when to give-up on a particular book. It’s amazing to me is that the majority of responders actually do this. There are many responses from people who state that they will, very quickly, drop a book if it’s not holding their immediate interest.

Okay, so that’s surprising to me. But there was one sentence in one response that blew me away, more so than those who read the last page before deciding to buy a book. The bold text below is that sentence (as it appears in the wild).

My point is I will quit reading once I know the book isn’t any good. I quit reading Heinlein’s “Fear No Evil” with only 30 pages to go. It was horrible. And like you, I kept expecting it to get better, I kept thinking “this one might change my life.” And then it dawned on me, that even if it did get better, it was too late. One of the only books I can remember throwing. And I like Heinlein.

That is……mind boggling. Here is the book he mentions. Guess how long it is? 512 pages. This guy has read 482 pages of an author he likes and, with just thirty left, tosses the book. That would have driven me insane. Once I reached that point in a craptastic book, I would have to continue on till the last page. It seems like otherwise it was all just a colossal waste of time. I would at least want the satisfaction of closing the book and saying “Done”.

But to end on a positive note, I think this is a nice sentiment:

I don’t know how many people would agree with me, but I say it’s not a waste of time to read bad books. There’s no way I can tell if a book was really for me until I reach the very last pages. A lot of times I encounter a twist that turns it into a completely different novel than i started out with (Atonement and Water for Elephants both come to mind). I’ve also read books that were blandly mediocre until their atrocious end (Digital Fortress), and I still don’t think reading them was a waste of my time. I suppose this is a quirk of how I read — I’d rather be able to be completely certain how I feel about a book, and that’s totally impossible unless I’ve actually read the entire thing.

Always a silver lining, eh?