Stop Reading That Book (So You Can Read More)

I recently stopped reading Cold Mountain.

I’d long had Charles Frazier’s award-winning novel of the waning days of the Civil War on my “To Be Read” list. Within the first few paragraphs, I could see that it was a beautiful book. The prose was luminous. The languid pace of development seemed to reflect the heat and wildness of the rural south.

And yet as the plot moved into the particular cruelties of the Confederate Home Guard, I realized that I didn’t have the stomach for this form of violence in my daily before-bed reading. I knew that, on the margin, I was going to start avoiding the book. That meant that when potential reading time appeared, I’d be more tempted than usual to scroll through pretty pictures on Instagram instead of reading.

And so I returned the book to the library early.

There was a time in my life when I would have felt guilty about this. What’s wrong with me that I can’t finish a critically-acclaimed, National Book Award-winning novel?

And yet eventually I have come to see that we’re only going to read so many books in life. Often, not finishing a book is the key to reading more.

For those of us who love to read, the math of how many more books we’ll finish in this lifetime is somewhat depressing. Even if you read 100…