I used to read books all the way through, regardless of how much I was enjoying it.<\/p>\n
It was a point of honor, I guess, or a belief that character was being built (or proven).<\/p>\n
Screw that. If you haven’t hooked me by the time I’ve finished, let’s say, a third of the thing, then you’re gone. A third might be too much for a really big book, but I don’t want to be dogmatic about this.<\/p>\n
There are exceptions. Really famous, culturally important books get a pass. There was The Maltese Falcon, as I just posted about recently. And, I mean, when I was reading the Iliad and Odyssey, by God, I was going to finish them. Not that they were bad, or difficult, but the quality and difficulty were beside the point.<\/p>\n
That’s because I can get something from finishing the Iliad that I can’t get from finishing the latest hot novel at the airport: I can get… having read the Iliad. That’s worth something. Without getting too much into it, it’s not just bragging rights. It includes suddenly understanding the hundreds of references all around us.<\/p>\n
Anyway, all this to say that I seem to be not finishing books lately, and I’m totally cool with that.<\/p>\n
Also, I really did want to post something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I used to read books all the way through, regardless of how much I was enjoying it. It was a point of honor, I guess, or a belief that character was being built (or proven). Screw that. If you haven’t hooked me by the time I’ve finished, let’s say, a third of the thing, then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-languagelit","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}