What I think it comes down to though is: I stop reading a book because I want to use my time differently, whether I want to start reading something else or perhaps not read at all. The quality of the book and how I connect with the book ultimately impacts this feeling/decision, but not entirely. As alluded to before, I really like and admire many of the books I’ve stopped reading. Some of my favorite quotes come from Angle of Repose (from the portion of the book I actually read) and based on what I’ve read so far of Studs Terkel’s The Good War: An Oral History of World War II, I’ve recommended it to a few friends.

Is the excuse “I want to stop reading this book so I can spend my time doing something else” good enough? Does it depend perhaps on what the “something else” is? What if it’s reading, but just a different book? That sounds like an apples to apples, zero loss/zero gain transaction.

I want to put this thought on pause for a moment and draw upon Henry Miller’s thoughts on reading. In his book, The Books In My Life, he describes the primary reasons for reading,

This makes sense, doesn’t it? Reasons one to four don’t really matter – or they shouldn’t (although Miller thinks we presently act as if the first four reasons matter more). And if the fifth reason Miller lists is truly the “correct” reason to read, that we should read “to enjoy ourselves, which means to be stimulated to greater,  higher activity and richer being” – then perhaps it’s a question of measuring the activity of reading the particular book in question (the one we’re considering abandoning) versus the competing activity (whether it’s a different book or something else) against the standard of this question. Which of these activities would bring greater enjoyment/stimulation? If we’re going to enjoy the other book or other activity more, then perhaps it’s okay to stop reading whatever it is we’re currently reading.

Of course, this forces us to ignore quite a few influences that may exist – namely some of the first four reasons for reading: the parents, teacher or friend or Oprah that told us to read such and such book as well as that nagging part of the mind that says we’ll be a better person if we just finish this book on how to persuade others. But Miller is saying that reading should be about enjoyment and enjoyment in the purest sense, what we ourselves find enjoyable, without pressures from elsewhere. And so if midway through a book, another book or activity seems to be more enjoyable – shouldn’t we be entitled to leave a book unfinished? Whether it’s a pause for a day, a week, years…or forever, I would say yes. Perhaps we’ll return to it, perhaps we won’t.

One of the results of this self-examination—for that is what the writing of this book amounts to—is the confirmed belief that one should read less and less, not more and more. As a glance at the Appendix will reveal, I have not read nearly as much as the scholar, the bookworm, or even the ” well-educated ” man—yet I have undoubtedly read a hundred times more than I should have read for my own good. Only one out of five in America, it is said, are readers of”books.” But even this small number read far too much. Scarcely any one lives wisely or fully.

Here an irrepressible impulse seizes me to offer a piece of gratuitous advice. It is this : read as little as possible, not as much as possible! Oh, do not doubt that I have envied those who drowned themselves in books. I, too, would secretly like to wade through all those books I have so long toyed with in my mind. But I know it is not important. I know now that I did not need to read even a tenth of what I have read. The most difficult thing in life is to learn to do only what is strictly advantageous to one’s welfare, strictly vital.

If it be knowledge or wisdom one is seeking, then one had better go direct to the source. And the source is not the scholar or philosopher, not the master, saint, or teacher, but life itself—direct experience of life.