I read fifty-two books last year, which was the target, and I abandoned thirty-one, which was not. The second number is the one I think about.
The rule that made it work
Page fifty. If I am not reading it willingly by page fifty, it goes back on the shelf, and I do not feel anything about it. I arrived at this rule in March, after spending five weeks on four hundred pages of a novel everyone had told me was important, finishing it out of spite, and remembering nothing.
Finishing a book you are not enjoying is not discipline. It is sunk cost with a bookmark in it.
Once the rule existed, something odd happened: I started more books. Four or five would be open at once, and three of them would quietly disappear. The ones that survived page fifty almost always got finished, and got finished quickly, because they were the ones I wanted to pick up.
What the numbers looked like
- 83 started, 52 finished, 31 abandoned
- Median time to abandon: four days
- Books abandoned and later restarted: two, both of which I then finished and loved
That last line is the interesting one. Timing was the problem, not the book. I had simply picked them up in the wrong month.
What I would change
The number. Fifty-two is a quota, and a quota quietly pushes you towards short books, which is not what I wanted. This year I am not counting, and I am reading more slowly, and I suspect the total will come out around thirty.
The page-fifty rule stays. It is the only reading advice I have ever given that people come back and thank me for.
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