Reading, ‘Riting, and Rule Breaking

As many of you know, I love to read. I read a lot, and I read a variety of genres. I have some favorite authors, both contemporary and classic, and I have a short list of authors whose work I have read and I wouldn’t read again. As I keep finding new authors to try, I suspect that I’ll add more favorites and will likely find a few that I will put on the don’t-read-again list.

I used to have a rule about the books I would read. It was simple. If I started a book, I would finish the book. It didn’t matter how much I didn’t care for the book, I had decided I would finish it on principle. I’ve only broken that rule three times that I can remember. Once was when I started and did not finish Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. I made it about 10 pages into this book. The f-bomb appeared on every page, not just once, not just twice. I picked a page and counted, and it was there 23 times. On one page. And it was like that on all ten of those pages I read. I simply couldn’t take it anymore. They made a movie, which was rated PG-13, which tells me that they did not drop the f-bomb nearly as often as it appeared in the book. It could have been a good story, but I simply couldn’t get past the language. I broke my rule, and I didn’t feel bad about it.

Another time, and this was before Nick and Nora, was when I started the first book The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. I just couldn’t get into it after a couple chapters, and I put it down. Many find that hard to believe, but at the time I just couldn’t get into it enough to make myself finish. I don’t even remember the title for the other book, but it was written by Patricia Cornwell. All I remember about it now was that it had something to do with her style and her use of tense. I don’t remember the specifics of what I didn’t like about it. I just remember I thought it was awful and decided that since I hadn’t broken the rule before, that it would be OK to break it just that once. Of course, we now know that I ended up breaking it again, but with both those cases, I believe I was justified in breaking the rule. And in case you’re wondering, I haven’t picked up another book by Cornwell either.

There have been quite a few other books I have read, and finished, on the basis of my rule. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick comes to mind. I wouldn’t recommend this book to anybody. I read it on principle only. It’s one of the classics. I teach English. Many make the wrong assumption when they think that just because I teach English I have read every classic out there. I have not. They also often assume that just because a book is a classic and I teach English that I like every classic out there. That’s also not true. I suffered through Moby Dick simply because I told myself, “You’re going to read this book so you can at least say you have read it.” When I think of the hours I put into that and the actual good books I could have read, I want to kick myself.

When I was a student and was assigned something to read, if I started it, I finished it, both based on my rule and the fact that I needed a good grade in the class. There have been several books I chose, and if it weren’t for the fact I had a rule, I would’ve put them down without finishing them. But I trudged on and finished and, with the exception of the two aforementioned books, I kept my rule intact. One book in particular that comes to mind is Patriot Games by Tom Clancy. I made it through almost half the book and put it down. It was driving me crazy. I read several other books, but because I had my rule, I picked this one back up and started where I’d left off. I’m glad I did. Shortly after that, it picked up the pace and I ended up really liking the book. Having finally made it through Patriot Games is what kept me reading when I started The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, which also started off really slow but ended up being pretty good. I thought my experience with these two books justified my rule. I should give every book a chance, and if I start, I should finish.

I’ve had this rule for as long as I’ve been reading. As many of you know, I have a goal to read 75 books this year, and as you also know, I’m 24 books away from making that happen. I started what could have been book 52 on the list for this year. It’s a classic that I hadn’t read and I thought I would give it a chance. It was The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. I started it on my Kindle while sitting in the doctor’s office the other day. I don’t know about the Kindle Fire, but my Kindle doesn’t tell me page numbers as I read. It gives me the percentage of the book that I’ve made it through. For this book, I’ve made it through the first 3% of the book, chapter one. And I hate it.

I’ve found that the older I get, the more I reflect on things. I’ve changed my mind about several different things, simply because age and experience indicated changing my mind would be the smartest thing to do. After reading 3% of that book and hating it, I realized I had a decision to make. Was I going to finish it? At this point, I decided it was time to do some reflecting about my rule. I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad rule, but I’m wondering if it’s still the best rule for me. Yes, I found a few books along the way that I was glad I stuck with because they ended up being good. But I’ve also endured a lot of books that didn’t get any better, and those are hours of my life that I can’t get back. And this leads me to another decision. If I choose not to finish this book, am I going to break my rule or get rid of my rule?

I spent some time thinking about it, not a lot but enough so that I could make a decision, and here’s what I’ve decided. The older I get, the more precious my time is. Because of that, my rule of having to finish a book just because I started it is no longer a rule. Time is too precious to spend with something you don’t like if you don’t have to. Therefore, from this point forward, if I start a book and if I decide I just don’t like it, then I’m putting it down and moving on to something else. Time is something you can’t get back, and the only time you should do something you don’t like to do is when you have no other choice (and as much as we’d like to think that should be never, we should be realistic enough to know that at times we all have to do things we don’t necessarily like or want to do, like jury duty or go to the doctor or deal with bad situations).

I’ve had this rule a long time and I don’t make changes in my personal life easily, but if it’s the right change, then I’m willing to make it. That’s one of those things that age and experience can teach you. So, not I’m not going to finish The Three Musketeers. I’m not going to feel bad about it. I’m going to embrace the lack of the rule, and I’m going to find books I enjoy and read those. A time may come when I put a book down and later decide to give it a second chance. That worked with the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. I finished the first book and wasn’t too crazy about it, but later decided to give the second book a chance and ended up finishing the series. So I won’t rule out that I will never finish The Three Musketeers, but it won’t be right now, and it might never happen. But freeing myself from the rule makes that OK, and now I’m just looking forward to happy days of reading.

What Makes a Reading Database?

After I wrote about my reading database, there was some interest about what is, and perhaps what isn’t, there. What do I read? I’d say most people would be surprised at the wide range of reading selections that have made the list of books I have read since 1996, the year I started keeping track of the information.

Before I get into the “what” of the list, I’ll explain the “how” of my database. I actually have two Excel documents related to this. The first is simply titled “books read” and it has columns for the book’s title, the author, the year, the number it is, and the number of pages. After getting my Kindle, I added two more columns for Kindle and number of megabytes. I thought this database was quite thorough, until Jimmy mentioned he knew someone who could tell me what movies she had watched in July 2000. It occurred to me, there is a column missing from my database, and so for 2012, between the author and year columns, I have added a column for month.

There is a logical explanation for each column. I’m sure most of you understand most of the columns. If I had to guess, the only columns you might question would be the number of pages and the number of megabytes. Those columns just give me a point of comparison. My goal is to read at least the same number of books each year, but I’d also like it to be approximately the same number of pages of reading material. It would seem like cheating if one year I read fifty books that had 20,000 pages of reading material, but the next year, I read fifty-one books but only had 5,100 pages of reading material. After getting the Kindle, I added the megabyte column for the same reason, to have a point of comparison. I’m sure my faithful friends will just roll their eyes and say something about OCD, but hey, it makes sense to me to do it this way.

My second document is called “books read stats.” Until I got the Kindle this summer, this document had only three columns: year, number of books, and number of pages. After getting the Kindle, two more columns – Kindle ed. and number of megabytes – were added. This document is much smaller, since there are only eighteen rows, one for each year 1996-2012, and one row that calculates the totals in columns B, C, and E (the numbers columns). The purpose of this document is to be able to quickly see what the totals for each year are without having to scroll the other document to find the end number for each year. It also lets me quickly see the number of pages and number of megabytes for the year. Since this information is for comparative purposes, I can easily and quickly make a comparison. The number of books column includes all books, those that I hold in my hand and read and those I read on my Kindle. Keeping a separate tally for the Kindle books will allow me to see, again easily and quickly, how much my Kindle gets used when compared to regular books.

So, that’s my system. It really is quite simple and logical. Should you decide to keep a reading database, you can use the columns I have or create your own, based on your needs. Now, though, what do I read?

I read both fiction and nonfiction. I don’t reread books often, mainly those that I assign to my classes. Since these books are often assigned every other year, I have to reread those in order to refresh my memory. I never know what kinds of questions the kids will ask during seminar, and if I don’t read it again at the same time the new class is reading it, they’ll ask me something that I don’t have a clue about because I’ve forgotten that particular detail over the course of the two years. Outside of that, though, I rarely read a book more than once. I simply don’t have the time. I have so many books I want to read that any time spent rereading takes away from the books I have yet to read.

For fiction, many of my favorite authors fill the list of books I have read. Some of these include Nicholas Sparks, John Grisham, James Patterson, Danielle Steel, Janet Evanovich, Jodi Picoult, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Richard North Patterson, Greg Iles, Dan Brown, Catherine Coulter, Michael Connelly, Nora Roberts, Mary Higgins Clark, John Jakes, Larry McMurtry, David Baldacci, Richard Paul Evans, Steve Alten, and Michael Crichton. I’ll read whatever I can find by that group of authors. I’ve also read several noteworthy series of fiction books, including the Harry Potter books, the Twilight books, the Hunger Games books, the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo books, the Mr. Monk books, and the Left Behind books.

I’ve read many of the classics, some because I teach them in my classes, and others because I wanted to. You will find Moby Dick on the list simply because I told myself I was going to read it. I have a rule – if I start a book, I must finish it. I may not finish it immediately, and I may take a break and read several other books before I finish it, but the rule is to finish. That rule is the only reason I finished Moby Dick. I hated that book, but I finished it. I have only broken the rule a couple of times. One book I started but never finished was Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. I may have made it ten pages into the book. That book had more f-bombs on one page than an R-rated movie. I stopped reading and counted up to 20 on one page, and nearly every page of the ten I’d read was just like that, and I simply decided rule or no rule, I could not finish that book.

Other classics I enjoyed included books by Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Chinua Achebe, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Bram Stoker, Ray Bradbury, and George Orwell. There are some who aren’t necessarily my favorites though, like John Steinbeck and Charles Dickens. The only good thing Dickens wrote was A Christmas Carol and the opening paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities. Two other classics I enjoyed were Alex Haley’s Roots and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind.

I also read a lot of nonfiction. I’ve read all of Dave Pelzer’s books about his struggles having been an abused child. I’ve read Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom; it’s one of my all-time favorites, and one of the few books I would reread whether or not I assigned it to my students (which I do, by the way). I also assign Lynn Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves, which I think is a masterpiece, though my students don’t always agree. I’ve read several biographies about Princess Diana; I’ve been fascinated with the Royal Family since the fairy-tale wedding. I’ve ready Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. I’ve read memoirs by Patrick Swayze, Rick Springfield, Lisa Whelchel, Barry Williams, Maureen McCormick, Robert Kennedy, Elie Wiesel, Jennings Michael Burch, Tim O’Brien, Randy Pausch, Melissa Sue Anderson, Paula Deen, and Chad Varga.

My database includes lots of others authors as well. There have been several books I thoroughly enjoyed, but it’s the only book by that particular author that I’ve read. I don’t limit myself to the authors mentioned above. If a title catches my attention, I’ll read the blurb to see what the book is about. If it sounds like something that will interest me, I’ll give it a chance. All of my favorite authors have lots of books I haven’t had a chance to read yet, and of course I’d like to make it through their other works. There are also several other memoirs out there that I want to read, from other members of the Little House on the Prairie cast or The Brady Bunch cast, just to name a couple.

Reading is wonderful. I don’t understand those who don’t enjoy reading. They really don’t know what they’re missing out on. I suggest reading every chance you get, and I suggest you don’t limit yourself. As you can see from what’s on my list, it’s all over the place. Yours should be, too. Keeping the database may not be for everybody, but I enjoy doing it; it helps me keep track of what I’ve read and when I read it. I have fallen way short of my goal for 2011 reading; however, I have set my 2012 goal at 75 books, and I’m going to work diligently to fulfill that goal.

If you have to choose between keeping a database and reading a book, by all means, go read the book. But if you do keep a database, what is on yours? Are there other columns I need to add to mine? If you ever need a suggestion for something that would be good to read, or something to avoid, just ask. I’ll be glad to share suggestions with you. For now, I need to go finish a book.