How to Abandon a Book
Americans are ferociously pragmatic. We nurture an appetite for quick and easy.
For practical. Effective. Profitable.
We love racy articles on how to retire early. How to cram for a test. How to shave a pound off our tummy.
And we want these articles to hammer home the point in 5, 10 or 15 easy steps.
Don’t make me think. At least not too hard. That’s the prevailing MO.
Naturally, this pragmatism MUST be avoided when it comes to cherishing a spouse, attending a cocktail party, raising children or sharing the gospel.
But I do strongly believe some things are in lock-step with expediency. Like reading books.
The Bookworm and His Perennial Pain
Why this near-demonic urgency? If you’re like me, you have a stack of unread books on your desk. On your shelf. In your car. And…
A list of books you’d like to knock out by years end. To make matters worse, every single day you hear about one more book you want to read.
What is a bookworm to do? My answer: Be ferociously pragmatic.
What Ferociously Pragmatic Looks Like
Perhaps this means you have to occasionally barrel through a 291 page book in two hours. Or clear a Saturday to motor through three books by John Piper, D. A. Carson or Mark Dever.
Take your pick.
But whatever is on your reading list one thing is clear: You must have a purpose. You must know what you are doing. And you must know when to quit a book when it’s lost it’s capacity to satisfy you.
In other words, you must know when to abandon it.
The Little Secret to Abandoning Books
You probably didn’t know this, but there’s an instinct to abandoning a book. Sort of like foraging for food. Except you are foraging for information. You are following a scent. An information scent.
And if while reading a book you lose that scent, you should stop and move onto something else.
For me, 50 pages is the limit at which I will endure a book that’s lost it’s scent before I abandon it. Take Francis Schaeffer’s book of sermons No Little People for example.
This was the fourth book by Schaeffer I’d read in a row. And just 35 pages in I decided it wasn’t appropriate for the task at hand…namely building a profile of Schaeffer and his theology.
I found How Then Should We Live and A Christian Manifesto to have a stronger scent all the way to the end.
Little People, on the other hand, is perfect for pulling off the shelf, sitting in a chair and reading one sermon. Then going back to work.
I found this to be true of Schaeffer’s letters. Some letters had that scent. Others didn’t.
The Risk I’m Willing to Take
Here’s a surprising fact: In one night I read scanned 200 pages of The Shack long after it lost the scent I was after, which was nothing more than a marginal grasp of it’s content.
This brings me to my next point.
What if the LAST 50 pages of a book are magic? Well, that’s a risk I’m willing to take. However, if I hear enough people endorsing the last 50 pages of a book, I’ll go back and read those 50. Maybe.
Bottom line [by the way, the phrase "bottom line" is quintessential language of a pragmatist]: Know when to stop reading a book that is bad. Whether “bad” means the writer is second rate or “bad” means the book isn’t giving you want you need.
Life is short to waste on bad books. And that’s my prevailing reading MO.
Your Turn
Are you a purposeful reader? Do you have a reading plan? How long before you abandon a book? Or do you feel guilty not finishing books you’ve started?
Love to hear your thoughts. Brutal and all.
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9 Comments to How to Abandon a Book
I do have a reading plan – one hastily cobbled together sometime in May this year when I realized I had a shelf full of books I had not read – read five of them – skimmed through two. Hard work.. but doable.. And now with the essential skill of letting go of a book that has lost its scent I may just make it through the list this year.
Demian FarnworthAugust 19, 2009
I love the plan! 20 books in 20 weeks. Great idea. God’s grace to you, and let me know how it turns out.
Oh man, bring on the liberty! I want to believe you and follow in the ways of “abandoning”! But, alas, I am currently an insecure, afraid-I’ll-miss-something reader who, indeed, feels guilty if I don’t finish what I started … 
Thanks for the good links to your previous stuff – just discovering your blog!
Peace
D,
My abandoned books seem to correlate to abandoned writing projects.
I like to think of these as temporarily abandoned, even though a couple of these projects and the related books have been set aside for several years now.
Delusional? Perhaps. But I like to think of these as old friends I’ll get back to in time.
I admired your reading list and the way you’ve attacked it! I tend to be a more compulsive book buyer and reader. I’ll read a great review and in the heat of the moment I’m on Amazon and in a matter of minutes, the order placed.
It’s funny, but when the book arrives at my doorstep, I’m sometimes not sure what I ordered until I open the package.
Yes, I may need an intervention. Perhaps find a local chapter of BBA (Book Buyers Anonymous) and attend regular meetings.
I’m also a slower reader than I’d like to be, so sometimes if a book “loses its scent” as you’ve called it, (I like that phrase, BTW) it can happen in a lot fewer than 50 pages. Sometimes it happens in the first couple of paragraphs and even the first two sentences on a few occasions. Again, in the back of my mind I’m thinking I’ll give it another chance later.
I had a very recent experience that broke my normal slow reading habit because the book simply swept me up and I consumed all of the nearly 500 pages in a week. It was “The Angel’s Game” by a wonderful Spanish writer, Carlos Ruiz Zafon. While he’s not a Christian author (that’s just an assumption on my part) and it’s not a “Christian” novel, his writing is superb. From one writer to another, I’d highly recommend you add this book to your list.
Well, I’m off to Amazon now. But hey, I don’t have a problem. I can quit anytime.
Hi Richard (said in my best, drawn-out, recovery meeting style voice!) – welcome to BBA.
My name is Wayne, and I’m a book buying addict …
(in unison) Hi, Wayne!
I wish I had a plan.
I work with a couple of publishing houses (I write lots of reviews) and publicists. They send me TONS of books (galleys, pre-publications, etc). And to tell you the truth, most of them stink. If this I get a book from an unknown or first time author, I feel worse about scrapping it. I feel like i have to give these first timers a chance before I pull the trigger.
But why? I don’t know them. I need to get over this. I have a book I am reading now that bores me to sleep.
Demian FarnworthAugust 20, 2009
Richard: The good, the bad and the ugly behind Amazon: The Good: With a credit card you can order anytime. The bad: With a credit card you can order anytime. The ugly: With a credit card you can order anytime.
I stopped looking at my credit card statements. 
Just kidding, but there’s some truth to that.
Looking forward to the Zafon read. Thanks for the tip!
Ugh, Don…are they fitness books, fiction, what?
August 26, 2009
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August 19, 2009