How to Finish Reading All the Books You Start

I read recently a literary critic who said that Tristram Shandy was one of those books in which no one ever got beyond page 10. Well I can do better than that. I was given Tristram Shandy as a school prize in 1959 and there it is in my bookshelf with a bookmark at p. 58. I think that works out at about six pages a decade.

The trouble is that I have lots of books like that. It's not that I get bored with them or don't like them. I would be perfectly happy to decide to stop reading a book I wasn't finding interesting. It's that I don't finish the books I do want to read. In fact I have bookshelves full of books with bookmarks sticking up half way through them. Even if I do get one of these books out of the bookshelf, I will have to start reading it again from the beginning because it's been so long since I looked at it that I've forgotten what I've already read.

Usually the reason I stop reading a book is because another book arrives on the scene. I start reading the new book in the enthusiasm of a new subject, and the old book gets forgotten about. Of course I never finish the new book either!

Recently I've found a way that avoids all this, and allows me to get all the books I start finished. If you have the same problem (and I know a lot of people do), you might like to try it.

What I do is simplicity itself. I chose five books as my "active" books and put them in a pile. Then I take the top book from the pile and read as much as I want to in one session. At the end of the session, it goes at the bottom of the pile. Then for my next reading session, I take the next book in the pile, read as much as I want to of that, and put it at the bottom of the pile. The two most important rules are:

1) I don't allow myself to read any book that's not in the pile. If a new book arrives it has to wait until one of the others is finished.

2) I don't allow myself to keep a book on top of the pile for more than one session. Once I've put it down, it has to go at the bottom of the pile.

This works like magic because the variety keeps my interest going. To make sure it works as well as possible, here are a couple of things to note:

1) Give yourself a good variety of books, both in subject, size and ease of reading. If you choose five heavy tomes, you will simply get yourself bogged down.

2) You can stop reading where you like, but most people like to aim for the end of a section or chapter. It helps if you read the first couple of sentences of the new section or paragraph before you put the book down. It helps your mind to prepare for the next session with that book.

Maybe I'll even get Tristram Shandy finished someday soon!

Comments

[Matthew Cornell]

Nice trick, Mark! I'm also a relatively new fan of being thoughtful regarding *how* I read (I wrote about it in " How to read a lot of books in a short time" - http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/2006/02/how-to-read-lot-of-books-in-short-time.html )

Cheers!

[Neil Cumming]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for this interesting article. I have a couple of questions regarding your implementation of this reading system.

You say that you take one book from the 'Active' pile, and read as much as you want to of it in one 'session'.

"Once I put it down, it has to go to the bottom of the pile".

I wonder what you define as 'one session'. If you sip just, say, a minute-and-a-half of the book before being interrupted by the door bell or a long phone conversation (for instance) does that constitute the end of the session? My worry, I suppose, is that I may become frustrated on occasions where I'm only able to catch short, unsatisfying snatches of each book before having to put it away again. Is there a danger of taking a frustratingly-long time to complete each individual book? Or am I taking the 'session' thing far too literally?

Also, I'm interested in how you have found the long term application of your system? Have you been using it long? And do you get narratives mixed-up, or are they fairly easy to separate in your mind? I'm so used to reading one book at a time that I'm a little cautious of trying it this way!

I ask these questions because I am an avid reader myself, yet sometimes get frustrated at my inability to match my reading speed to my book-gluttony (I can speed read a little, but to prefer to use this for newspapers and suchlike, and to savour novels at a reasonably sensible pace).

Your reading system sounds like it could be just the solution for me, but I just wanted a little clarification on the above points.

Many thanks, Mark, for your books (I have read the first two several times, and am about to start 'DIT' for the second time) and the fantastic website and fascinating blogs and articles.

Regards,

Neil Cumming

[Mark Forster]

Dear Neil,


Regarding the length of a session: this is entirely up to you. What I was recommending was that you didn't keep on picking up the same book without giving any of the others their turn.

It's important that you have a good mix of books. That means you get some progressing quickly, while some progress slowly and surely. If you try to read five heavy tomes on "The Molecular Structure of DNA" at the same time, yes, you will a) get bogged down and b) confuse the books together. But if you're reading a detective novel, a classic novel, a popular history, a personal development book and a book on the Molecular Structure of DNA, you won't get bogged down and you won't confuse them together.I should mention that there's nothing sacred about the figure of five books. If you find it works better for you with three or four, that's absolutely fine.

[Wendy]

I have some law reading, chapters I can take out of the course manual. I am tempted to incorporate this in the five, to see how it works. Although I do wonder whether I should keep it separate from "fun reading".

Wendy