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> Part of why I dislike essay collections is their neverendingness; I’ll read two, three, four essays in a volume and I still can’t cross it off my list. An inc

> Part of why I dislike essay collections is their neverendingness; I’ll read two, three, four essays in a volume and I still can’t cross it off my list. An incomplete task, it becomes a mental weight, an obligation. I’m deprived of the satisfaction of finishing. Not being able to close a book without reading everything in it is a problem. People need to get over this, it's compulsive behavior. You don't have to read all the essays, just close the book, nobody's keeping score.

beacon294 2y ago
Absolutely. In 2020 I gave myself permission to simply abandon books and it has really helped me out.
vishnugupta 2y ago
100% agreed. Maybe that urge (or need for the satisfaction) stems from having paid for a book or keeping a list of "read" books etc., But it's not worth the time and effort. If you find a book uninteresting, just close it and move on. If you linger on it later you can always return to it.
awongh 2y ago
I've loved kindle samples for this reason. (Although all samples are not the same length) If I get to the end of the sample (which may take an hour to read? - longer than bookstore browsing time) and have enough reasons to continue I'll buy the book. I've recently run into the opposite problem -I have 20 samples I'd like to finish and 6-8 books I put down that I want to pick back up. I'm starting to lose track. Also as an aside, kindle library organization UI is really terrible.
mafro 2y ago
Just noting that this narrative in the post is contrary to the author's own guidelines - where they go into not finishing books (called "DNF"s lol) https://tracydurnell.com/2023/08/19/my-reading-philosophy-and-17-reading-guidelines/ https://tracydurnell.com/2023/08/19/my-reading-philosophy-an...
dominicrose 2y ago
Some open-world video games are very long to finish, but they have a primary story/quest that's not too hard to complete, so it doesn't feel bad to stop there. Time is important, watching a series instead of a film is rarely worth it. Technical books have whole sections you can easily skip until the day you may need it. Non-fiction can be read faster when it's explained in details. I guess fiction big books are the ones you have to read entirely to be satisfied.
richrichie 2y ago
Natsume Soseki once said that reading every book from cover to cover is like marrying every girl you fall in love with. I think it was in the book Kusamakura. A physicist friend of mine changed my life by simply saying that the reader is under no obligation to or has a contract with the author that he needs to read everything the author wrote. I cam across the more poetic Soseki later.
- frereubu 2y ago
  Likewise, Borges said (paraphrasing) "if you're not enjoying a book after a while, just put it down - it wasn't written for you".
cauch 2y ago
I understand for a novel or something. But for an essay, not finishing it is sometimes not finishing the argument and therefore not understanding the point at all. I guess the article's point is that an essay is presenting one idea in the smallest amount of sentences possible. Imagine you do that and get an essay with 100 pages. It means that 90 pages is not enough to understand the idea. Now, imagine I uselessly triple the number of pages by repeating each sentence in 3 different ways. In this case, if I just read the first 100 pages and stop, I did not understood the idea, and reading these 100 pages was at best useless (the situation is the same as if I did not know the idea at all) or more realistic counter-productive (I have badly understood the idea).
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  An essay collection is multiple essays. As for one 100-page essay, you should definitely be able to understand the idea within 90 pages (hopefully 10 pages). The author might need 100 pages to close off all major counterarguments, cite precedence, explore some second-order tradeoffs, underscore the importance of their argument using evidence, and lay the groundwork for future areas of investigation. We could say "just cut out that stuff" but that weakens the essay and makes it shallow. Instead, it's uo to the reader to skip it if they don't have time or interest. But then they should also hold off on dismissing it based on counterarguments for which they declined to read the provided rebuttals.
  - cauch 2y ago
    That does not change anything to my point: saying "just stop reading a novel whenever you want" is not incompatible with "essays should get to the point". Even if you are right, you still acknowledge that you need a "core" explanation for the essay and that stopping before finishing it is not enough to grasp the idea properly. The only things the author of the article says is that it's better if the core explanation is not stretched in length for no real reason. So, it demonstrates that it is not the same as for a novel. The so-called "paradox" or "hypocrisy" does not exist. It's like pretending that someone is hypocritical if they both say "I like movies where the main character does a lot of fighting" and "I really don't like the fact that my physics professor does a lot of fighting during their lecture".
Maxamillion96 2y ago
if im reading a big sci-fi anthrology, i just search for key-terms that interest me and read the stories that contain them (eg, robot, colony,planet etc)
cafard 2y ago
The books that I feel compelled to finish are those for our neighborhood book club. The household that picks furnishes dinner, so I feel that there is a contract there. (Not every one does. "Well, I've been really busy, and I listened to most of it.") This has led me to finish a few rotten books that I'd never have gone past page 20 on if I had encountered them at a beach house. But you raise an interesting point. I really like The Hall of Uselessness by Simon Leys, but have I read every essay in it? I think so, but am not sure.

beacon294 2y ago

Absolutely. In 2020 I gave myself permission to simply abandon books and it has really helped me out.

vishnugupta 2y ago

100% agreed. Maybe that urge (or need for the satisfaction) stems from having paid for a book or keeping a list of "read" books etc., But it's not worth the time and effort. If you find a book uninteresting, just close it and move on. If you linger on it later you can always return to it.

awongh 2y ago

I've loved kindle samples for this reason. (Although all samples are not the same length) If I get to the end of the sample (which may take an hour to read? - longer than bookstore browsing time) and have enough reasons to continue I'll buy the book. I've recently run into the opposite problem -I have 20 samples I'd like to finish and 6-8 books I put down that I want to pick back up. I'm starting to lose track. Also as an aside, kindle library organization UI is really terrible.

mafro 2y ago

Just noting that this narrative in the post is contrary to the author's own guidelines - where they go into not finishing books (called "DNF"s lol) https://tracydurnell.com/2023/08/19/my-reading-philosophy-and-17-reading-guidelines/ https://tracydurnell.com/2023/08/19/my-reading-philosophy-an...

dominicrose 2y ago

Some open-world video games are very long to finish, but they have a primary story/quest that's not too hard to complete, so it doesn't feel bad to stop there. Time is important, watching a series instead of a film is rarely worth it. Technical books have whole sections you can easily skip until the day you may need it. Non-fiction can be read faster when it's explained in details. I guess fiction big books are the ones you have to read entirely to be satisfied.

richrichie 2y ago

Natsume Soseki once said that reading every book from cover to cover is like marrying every girl you fall in love with. I think it was in the book Kusamakura. A physicist friend of mine changed my life by simply saying that the reader is under no obligation to or has a contract with the author that he needs to read everything the author wrote. I cam across the more poetic Soseki later.

frereubu 2y ago
Likewise, Borges said (paraphrasing) "if you're not enjoying a book after a while, just put it down - it wasn't written for you".

cauch 2y ago

I understand for a novel or something. But for an essay, not finishing it is sometimes not finishing the argument and therefore not understanding the point at all. I guess the article's point is that an essay is presenting one idea in the smallest amount of sentences possible. Imagine you do that and get an essay with 100 pages. It means that 90 pages is not enough to understand the idea. Now, imagine I uselessly triple the number of pages by repeating each sentence in 3 different ways. In this case, if I just read the first 100 pages and stop, I did not understood the idea, and reading these 100 pages was at best useless (the situation is the same as if I did not know the idea at all) or more realistic counter-productive (I have badly understood the idea).

mitthrowaway2 2y ago
An essay collection is multiple essays. As for one 100-page essay, you should definitely be able to understand the idea within 90 pages (hopefully 10 pages). The author might need 100 pages to close off all major counterarguments, cite precedence, explore some second-order tradeoffs, underscore the importance of their argument using evidence, and lay the groundwork for future areas of investigation. We could say "just cut out that stuff" but that weakens the essay and makes it shallow. Instead, it's uo to the reader to skip it if they don't have time or interest. But then they should also hold off on dismissing it based on counterarguments for which they declined to read the provided rebuttals.
- cauch 2y ago
  That does not change anything to my point: saying "just stop reading a novel whenever you want" is not incompatible with "essays should get to the point". Even if you are right, you still acknowledge that you need a "core" explanation for the essay and that stopping before finishing it is not enough to grasp the idea properly. The only things the author of the article says is that it's better if the core explanation is not stretched in length for no real reason. So, it demonstrates that it is not the same as for a novel. The so-called "paradox" or "hypocrisy" does not exist. It's like pretending that someone is hypocritical if they both say "I like movies where the main character does a lot of fighting" and "I really don't like the fact that my physics professor does a lot of fighting during their lecture".

Maxamillion96 2y ago

if im reading a big sci-fi anthrology, i just search for key-terms that interest me and read the stories that contain them (eg, robot, colony,planet etc)

cafard 2y ago

The books that I feel compelled to finish are those for our neighborhood book club. The household that picks furnishes dinner, so I feel that there is a contract there. (Not every one does. "Well, I've been really busy, and I listened to most of it.") This has led me to finish a few rotten books that I'd never have gone past page 20 on if I had encountered them at a beach house. But you raise an interesting point. I really like The Hall of Uselessness by Simon Leys, but have I read every essay in it? I think so, but am not sure.