When to Give Up on a Book

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. When is it time to break up with a book?

Oh boy.

Maybe you’ve given it a few pages or a few chapters and you just can’t get through it.

Do you feel obligated to go ahead and finish that thing?

Are you asking me or is this rhetorical?

Both. Both.

Well, what do you do, Martha?

You know, I have this weird thing where I will read a book most of the way through, even a book I like.

And sometimes I drop it when I only have 20 pages left.

Oh, I’ve done that too.

Really?

Yeah, absolutely.

The number of books that have a bookmark at 90% of the way through.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

Why is that?

I think the author tailed off and so did I.

I think they lost their inertia.

That is so interesting.

I thought I was the only one.

Wow.

Well, I was thinking about this because Nancy Pearl, the librarian who’s known for her book, Book Lust, recently updated her rule of 50.

You remember she used to urge people to read at least 50 pages of a book.

But she noted that as she gets older, she’s realizing that there are more and more and more books out there and that she’s never going to get to them all.

So she added a little corollary to her rule of 50.

And it goes, when you’re 51 years of age or older, subtract your age from 100.

And the resulting number, which of course gets smaller every year, is the number of pages you should read before you can guiltlessly give up on a book.

As the saying goes, age has its privileges.

And the ultimate privilege of age, of course, is that when you turn 100, you are authorized by the rule of 50 to judge a book by its cover.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

You know, for a long time, I’ve used the expression reading mortality or book mortality.

I think I’ve used it on the show a couple of times and I may have learned it from her.

There was a piece in the Boston Globe many years ago.

But the idea is when you have that that dawning moment that you’re never going to get to all the books you want to read before you die.

Yeah. And it happens to me all the time.

It happens to me with the stack of books next to my bed, which I think is up to 40 now.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And to just see them on the shelves is like a memento mori.

I have to tell you, my rule is it used to be 100 pages, but now it’s instant.

Like you have to impress me chapter one, page one.

And you’re not even 50.

No, I’m not even 50.

And I will tell you why.

It’s because I give a lot of books a chance based on recommendations and people have terrible taste.

I mean, no, that’s obviously just a joke.

But the truth is it takes me a while to figure out who in my world really has taste like me.

So I will try books that somebody recommends, hoping that they’re my literary doppelganger and that what they like, I like.

So I get a lot of books that I’m like, oh, yeah, this is terrible.

And this person does not match me in their taste and inclinations.

Well, I would be really interested to know what our listeners have to say about that.

Yeah. Give us a call. 877-929-9673.

Tell us, when do you give up on a book or as an author or a novelist?

What kind of shot should people be giving you?

Should we give you a chapter?

Two?

Ten?

877-929-9673.

Or email words@waywordradio.org.