In Search of READING THAT RESONATES
A Few Things to Know About Crappy Books, Audiobooks, and Banned Books
L
BY HAILEY MINTON
Let me set the stage: you’ve invested a few hours into a book. It didn’t grab you initially, but you held out hoping it would get better. Each time you pick it up, you’re still hoping…but it’s not getting better. A good book can give you a visceral reaction as a scene plays out. Your heart starts beating faster as you eagerly wait to see what they stumble across in the damp tunnel with stagnant air. It takes a substantial amount of self control to keep your eyes from jumping to the paragraph on the next page. You care for the characters, and you can feel their wins and losses. You find yourself thinking about what you’ve read, even when the book isn’t in front of you. The ideas printed in the book spark conversation with family and friends. You can hone in on what you really think about a topic and figure out if you agree or disagree with the author or character and why. But what happens when a book isn’t giving you that experience? What do you do next? Do you feel like you need to finish your book with the same level of obligation of finishing food off your plate?
BREAKING UP WITH A BOOK
“I've only quit two books that I can remember,” said Craig Corless from North Ogden. “The first was a Stephen King book. After reading everything he wrote for a couple of decades, halfway through one, I suddenly grew tired of the fiction and the excess metaphor filler. It just no longer excited me, and I found nothing fulfilling about reading any more of it. The second was Thoreau, when I had enough of the pretentious, long-winded irony about simplifying that should have been done in less than a hundred pages instead of several hundred. I finally just asked myself: Why would I continue wading through this while cringing, when it's just a book that is supposed to be for my own enjoyment? I then quickly grabbed some John Muir and Edward Abbey to get that bad taste out of my eyes.”
Linden Puzey Kendall from North Ogden said, “I try to at least read the first chapter of the book. If it does not bring me joy, I will Marie Kondo the thing and never touch it again… The events in the first chapter of a book really set things in motion and need to capture the reader's attention by foreshadowing main characters and what events bind them together.” Personally, I’ve realized life is too short to spend it reading books that don’t engage me. After recently trudging through a book I didn’t enjoy, I’ve discovered my own litmus test for when I read in the future: Am I looking forward to reading the book, or am I looking forward to finishing it so I don’t feel obligated to read it any more?
