How to Finish Reading All the Books You Start
Friday, November 3, 2006 at 16:14 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!
Mark Forster
The growing popularity of the e-book reader over the last few years has made this method both easier and more powerful. In my Kindle I have opened a folder called “Active” which contains my five current books. The Kindle keeps track of the order of the books and where I’ve got to in each book.
Because of the portability of the Kindle versus carrying around five printed books, I can switch between books during one long reading session (e.g. in a train, on the beach). Perfect!
Confession: I still haven’t read Tristram Shandy though!
Reader Comments (38)
Cheers!
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
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
.WOW...been feeling very guilty about spending money on books...I hadn't finished for a variety of reasons.
These tips are awesome and perfect for someone like me.
THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for bringing this subject back up to the top of the pile.
Alys:
Thanks for pointing out that this method is very similar to AF. I need to think about that, and see how reading books etc can be best incorporated into AF. At the moment I am just putting each book in as a separate task, but maybe there is a better way using a sub-list. Hmmm....
I'm sure to try this later.
I hope it works for you, but I have to admit I still haven't finished Tristram Shandy!
P.S. feel free to email me
Another question is the usual dilemma: whether I dare to put reading associated with a current project into the general AF list or instead put it into a separate list, or timeblock it, etc. etc.
And I can see ways of gaming the technique: say, reading a paragraph of the top book in order to get to the more interesting book below.
And then there's the hope that someone will produce fascinating apps for cycling through e-books on the Web in this fashion ...
All the usual AF high jinks.
Chris
My list currently consists of:
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel (my favorite currently)
On the Origin of Species by Darwin
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky (close second favorite to Beatrice and Virgil!)
So thank you again for your nice advice!
I hope I can combine both effectivly to get the most out of the readings. Wish me luck:)
Many blessings.
The great thing about Kindle is that you can archive the 168 books to your computer without losing them, and then top up the remaining 5 as you finish reading them.
My main aim is not to "make sure I read everything", but rather to make conscious decisions about what I'm _not_ going to read. I dropped two books from the stack just this week (mostly because I didn't trust the authors). The big advantage of the stack is that, once I start reading something, I either (a) finish it or (b) decide I'm never going to read it. It's nice to have that clarity.
Getting the right mix is definitely important - before I dropped those two, I had a stack of fairly unappealing books.
A few of other things:
* I'm keeping a definite "supply" of "will probably read" physically separated from the other books on my shelves. When a slot opens up in the stack, I know to choose one from there.
* For my eBook reader - I put physical placeholders in the stack.
* I've had good results mixing papers and articles into the stack too. I might read them in full the first time they come up, but it makes sure I do read them (or decide not to).
The "Five Books" seems like "Column 2" = the books you've committed to read or delete.
The "Waiting List" or "Will Probably Read" seems like "Column 1" = the books waiting to be promoted to the "active" list in Column 2.
There are obvious differences also -- in SuperFocus you basically need to activate a new Column 1 task every time you cycle through the Column 2 tasks, otherwise you dismiss that page of Column 1 tasks. Whereas in "BookFocus" you keep cycling through the active books and don't add any new ones till a book is completed or deleted, thus opening a slot for a new active book.
Actually that sounds a lot like "3T" or "3T + AF4" ( see http://www.markforster.net/blog/2010/11/4/live-demo-tomorrow-november-5.html and http://www.markforster.net/blog/2010/11/7/the-rules-by-which-i-ran-the-demo.html )
I suppose the common element between all these systems is a "high gear" list and a "low gear" list. The difference is simply the set of rules that govern the interaction between the two lists.
I've tried a few different approaches but am not yet satisfied.
After reading this blog post, I'm thinking maybe I should keep two shelves of printed reading material -- one for the ~5 "active" items, and another for the "waiting" items. New material would be placed at the rightmost end of the "waiting" shelf. If the waiting shelf fills up, then I'd dismiss/discard several items from the leftmost end of the shelf. "Active" material would be treated in a similar manner: least recently touched goes at the leftmost end of the active shelf. Most recently touched goes at the rightmost end of the active area.
Then I'd simply have a recurring Column 1 task, "Reading". I'd take the leftmost item from the "Active" shelf, read as much as I want, then put it back on the rightmost end of the "Active" shelf. If I still want to read, I'd take the next item from the "Active" shelf, read as much as I want, then put it back on the rightmost end of the "Active" shelf. If I finish an item, I'd put it away downstairs, or toss it or file it, and then replenish the Active shelf from something taken from the "Waiting" shelf.
Do you do something like this, Mark? Do you use SF to "drive" your reading time? Do you sometimes give a book "special treatment" by putting the book title directly on your SF list (as you did with War and Peace)?
I just have a task called "Reading". I don't use a waiting list.
I also had the habit of reading lots of books at once and never finishing any of them, so I developed the following method to keep myself in line.
I always have one designated book which is my main read. I set myself a simple goal -- I must read at least 5 pages of that book every day. Provided I do that, I can read anything else I want during the day.
Those 5 pages very often turn to 10 or 20 pages or more -- but as long I reach the 5 page quota it's fine. It doesn't matter when I read those 5 pages -- it can be in the morning or the evening, before my other reading or after it, whatever I feel like doing that particular day.
I've found this method very helpful -- but perhaps I'll try Mark's method as well.
It's well worth sticking with the novel, though, as it contains some of the greatest gags in all literature, e.g. the moment when the narrator worries that the reader might guess the end of the narrative from the next page & promises that if so, he'll tear the page from the manuscript. Next page: totally blank.
An eccentric & meandering tale to be sure, & not for everyone, but genius nonetheless. A straight line may be the shortest point between two points, but it is seldom the most interesting.
"So much of motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy—and ... to stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the devil." TS
Glad to hear someone has read the book - maybe I'll try again with an electronic version.
To the pile it goes 😁
And meh...e-readers are neat & all, but I like good ol' fashioned hardcovers & paperbacks! (even at the ripe age of 23!! Lol)
Two quick thoughts for the group:
1) There is a great Japanese word "Tsundoku", which means acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them. I love that this is a phenomenon worthy of a word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundoku
2) I also found comfort and an explanation for tsundoku in this quote attributed to Warren Zevon - "We love to buy books because we believe we're buying the time to read them."
1. I think that's going to become my new motto - TSUNDOKU!
2. Love the quote.
That's certainly true of the book I'm currently reading: "Make It Stick: the Science of Successful Learning" by Brown and Roediger.
Regarding to your Kindle strategy; I'm actually using the same strategy. I've created a collection of my active list called "@Active-5". The "@" symbol is to keep this collection on the very top of the listing overview on the Kindle.
Please let me share with you my other strategies how to finish reading books:
http://unchainmybrain.com/how-to-finish-books-you-start/
Btw., what do you prefer: Kindle or a real book?
Marko
Thanks for the link. Some good stuff there.
As for Kindle v. real book, the answer is that I prefer Kindle for books which are purely text and which are designed to be read from one end to the other. If there are illustrations or it's a reference book or text book rather than a straight read, then I prefer real books.
Some advantages of real books:
They look pretty (most of them anyway)
They have a physical presence so you can find "something to read" more quickly
Other people can see what you're reading if you want to show off your fashion-awareness or erudition.
The illustrations are easier to manage.
Some advantages of Kindle books:
They are cheaper (most of them)
You can carry a huge number of books around with you
They automatically show the books in a list in order of last-read
You can search them (important when reading long Russian novels, e.g. is Pierre Bezukhov the same person as Pyotr Kyrillovitch? Answer: Yes)
You can highlight a word in a foreign language and get an immediate translation.
You can adjust the font size