I love reading books and I like reading them in parallel. At any time, I may have 10 of them going on. Depending on my mood I may pick up one of them during my night-time reading. Some of them will capture my attention and I end up reading without diverting to another book. But there are many of them that I have read, left, come back, left again multiple times before I finished reading it. The nature of story and my mood do not coincide always.
What happens when I leave the book midway and unable to return to it for a long time or forever. It is different when I read a small part of the book and do not like it to continue. But in many cases I like the book, continue to read it almost till midway and then lose interest. Currently there are so many of these books that are unfinished. “Sons and Lovers” by D. H. Lawrence, “Museum of Innocence” by Orhan Pamuk, “Social Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman, “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, by George Orwell, “Madame Bovary”, by Gustave Flaubert are some of these books that I remember now. There have been many more.
Sometimes even the authors that you like may not capture your attention for some of their books. I love reading P. G. Wodehouse. But there are some books of Wodehouse that I have started and just could not finish them.
I wonder whether I should feel guilty about not finishing these books. Did I not show enough patience to finish the book? How do I really know if the book is good or not by reading only half of it? I can’t be feeling guilty if the story or writing did not keep me engaged. It may be a great book and liked by many others but if I have to struggle to finish it then it is probably not meant to be for me. I may return back to these books someday but till then there are more than enough books and writers to explore and keep me engaged.
I and Books 