On Wed, 13 Dec 2000, Gord Sellar wrote:
> At 9:20 PM -0400 13/12/2000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >In a message dated 12/13/00 9:44:21 AM Mountain Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >writes:
> >
> >I haven't skipped to the middle of a book since I was about 9 or 10.
>
> How weird. I've never considered doing such a thing.
There were a couple of books that weren't holding my attention so well in
the first chapter, but skipping ahead to around chapter 7 or 8 (out of 10)
where things were more interesting, reading to the end, and then going
back from the beginning and reading the part I'd skipped made it faster
going in the long run. (I didn't do this often, and only did it with
books where the chapters could be taken more as stand-alone incidents than
part of a cohesive whole that had to be taken in order.)
> > (I
> >also don't give up on books in the middle, even if one seems to be a waste
> >of my time -- if I do that, I've admitted that the time I've put into it
> >already was a waste, and I hate doing that.)
>
> Owch. I don't do that at the increasingly-common "crap ending" that
> comes after 300 or 400 pages of pretty good storytelling, but if at
> midpoint (or even before) I think a book is crap, I throw it aside and
> don't turn back (semi-recent recipients of this honor include Clive
> Barker's _The Great and Secret Show_, which I thought was brilliant in
> high school, and a vamp novel called _Afterage_ by Yvonne Navarro).
> Probably this is a function of being a slow reader, and also of having
> had so much to read in school, including stuff I that was convinced
> WAS crap. (Try reading Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journals
> sometime: "hd. the tooth-ach again today..." ARGH! *Nobody* should
> have to read those damn journals.)
I'm a fast enough reader (a little under a page a minute for non-fiction,
in general, better than a page a minute for fiction) and have a good
enough screening process for books that I don't find I want to give up on
very many things in the first place, at least not anymore. I think that
_Blue Mars_ may be the worst book (in my opinion, at least!) that I've
read in the past few years, and even that wasn't a total waste.
I had a roommate who was in the habit of throwing books across the room if
she got to a particularly disturbing scene; several times I came in to
find the paperback she'd borrowed from me on my bed in a weird position.
And she didn't hesitate to tell me just what it was that had elicited the
reaction. Whatever it was generally wasn't enough to bother me to the
point of giving up on the book. (Part of it is that I can turn off
visualizing what's being described in print, so a graphic description of
something really icky won't hit me as hard as it will others.)
I also have the luxury of not *having* to read very much; the big
exception lately is _What to Expect When You're Expecting_, which I was
instructed to acquire and read, and I skipped the chapter that began with
the advice that you skip it unless you were faced with one of the problems
described therein. And I wanted to read it anyway. (And once I'd read a
chunk of that, I *really* wanted to read _The Girlfriends' Guide to
Pregnancy_, which a friend recommended, and which really helped with some
of the weird pregnancy stuff that _WtEWYE_ didn't touch on at all.) And
those are both books that you can read out of order after consulting the
table of contents. :)
Julia
