Two Good Books

My New Year's reading is starting off with these two books:

The Quandary

Several years ago Maren gave me Nancy Pearl's book, Book Lust. Nancy Pearl gave me, and all readers, permission to quit reading a book if it's not right for me. She has a nifty formula to know when to quit. You take your age, deduct it from 100, read that many pages, and if you can't get into the book by then give it up.



Knowing when to set a book aside has been a hard lesson for me. When I was younger I finished everything I started, but as I age I realize that life is too short to spend on books I don't like. When I was younger I was also an English major who was required to read books whether I liked them or not because there'd either be a test, or I'd have to write a paper. I no longer have those constraints and I've gotten better at being honest with myself and moving on when neccessary. But it's still hard for me.



I had the opportunity to employ this method twice in the past two to three weeks: First with Salmon Rushdie's Midnight's Children, and again with Joyce Carol Oates' broke heart blues. I took the Rushdie book with me on my final two week trip to Portland. It was the only book I took. I started it with great hope. The sentences on the first page drew me in, I just knew this was going to be a long, involved, challenging and wonderful book. After a chapter or two it started to drag. I told myself it was my fault. I passed page 42 - the book was still hard and I wasn't understanding what it was about. I felt I was reading in circles. I decided after several hunderd pages that I would put it down. However, I didn't have anything else to read and I can't go to sleep at night without a book to read. I didn't want to buy a new book because I didn't want to carry so much on the plane, etc. etc. In short I kept reading. I read on the airplane. I thought I'd quit when I got home. But I didn't. I started reading every other paragraph and then every third paragraph. Then I was so close to the end, I just sat there and finished it.



Now I know the author would insist I hadn't really read the book. And I suppose if I was in an English class it would have been hard to convince my professor that I had actually read the book. But I'm not sure if I had read every single word I would have understood the book any better. In short, I wished I had put the book aside and saved all those hours that I spent on it to use for something else.



It was with delight that I then picked up Chiam Potok's Old Men at Midnight. I was drawn into that book immediately, read every word, and was sorry when it was over.



And then came one of my favorite author's books, broke heart blues. Like the Rushdie book I started Oates' book with great enthusiasm. The sentences on the first page drew me right in. I could tell this was going to be a long saga about life in a small town in upstate New York. What could be better? The same thing happened as when I was reading Midnight's Children. I started with great enthusiasm and it soon fizzled. However, this time, I put the book down. It was so difficult, but I was able to move on the Pillars of the Earth, and Donna Tart's Little Friend - both of which I enjoyed immensely.

In my long winded way, what I'm trying to say is that I'm learning to give myself permission to not finish something. In this case it's books. But since this blog is supposed to be about knitting, I hope I can also accept that I don't have to finish every single project I start. This business of finishing everything is all tied up with perfectionism - it's not always a good thing. I need to learn when to cut my losses.

With all this said, I've put the unfinished books on my shelf. Maybe some day I'll be ready for them - but not right now. Enough said.