Loading ...300 pages down, 700 pages to go…
flockwoodI’m reading a book on the history of Christianity and I’m 300 pages into it, but I’ve barely made a dent in it.
I’ve still got 1,600 years of history and 700 pages of paper to wade through before I reach the finish line. And it crossed my mind last night — maybe I should just quit.
My wife says there’s no shame in throwing in the towel. I’ve been reading about church history non-stop for the past few months and if my brain is full, it’s fine to call it a day, she suggests.
This year, I’ve read The Jesus Wars by Philip Jenkins and A New History of Early Christianity by Charles Freeman and Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire that Rescued Western Civilization by Lars Brownsworth and God’s Battalions by Rodney Stark — all of them focusing on Christianity prior to 1453.
Maybe, I need to shift topics for a bit.
Do you ever give up on a book? What’s the most pages you’ve ever read before pulling the plug?
August 20th, 2010 at 11:15 am
I hate doing it, but I give up on books all the time for different reasons. Some are just too long, some are written by imbeciles, and some i just lose interest in. It’s okay to stop reading a book; just make sure you grab another quickly. Keeping the reading habit alive is more important than finishing any single book.
August 20th, 2010 at 11:16 am
A few hundred pages into the first volume of “Gulag Archipelago.” Wish I had finished it, but it’s intense. Right now I’m 3/4 through “The Odyssey,” which I had only read in abridged form in school, and I’m tempted to abridge it again. Odysseus, avenge the *!@# suitors already!
August 20th, 2010 at 11:36 am
I started reading “Gulag Archipelago” in late 1984 or early 1985. I remember it clearly because it came up during my college interview.
“What books do you like?” I was asked.
I mentioned a lightweight author and the interviewer laughed, as if I was pulling his leg.
So, I laughed along, adding, quickly, “I’m currently working on The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzksheinseityzsseyn.” (I think that’s more or less how I pronounced it. The correct spelling, according to Google, is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.)
My claim was, in fact, true. I had started reading Gulag. I’d finished a few pages. I had a long way to go.
The answer seemed to satisfy my interviewer. We progressed to the next series of questions. I was accepted. And 25 years later, I’m still only part-way through the Gulag Archipelago…
August 20th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Moby Dick, perhaps a quarter of the way into the book.
August 23rd, 2010 at 1:28 pm
I think sometimes you need to take a break from a subject to process information. I always find after I’ve left of a subject for a month, that I understand it a bit better when I pick it up again. Incidentally, Christianity: the First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCullough (sp) is great.
August 24th, 2010 at 8:45 am
Frank, maybe some day we can form an online Gulag reading group. Just not any time soon. I guess we can still boast that we’re working our way through it!
I’m closing in on the end of “The Odyssey,” finally. It feels like I read it in real time. Homer’s great but needed an editor.
August 24th, 2010 at 11:14 am
I read the Gulag Archipelago fairly quickly — at least the first two volumes; I don’t think the third was out yet when I was in college. The book that always stymied me was Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter, which was described to me by one of my college professors as the most difficult book he’d ever read. I began reading it about 1980, and still pick it up occasionally.
Ditto my fascination with Jaroslav Pelikan’s great series on the history of the development of Christian doctrine, which I began reading some time in the ’90s and haven’t yet finished the first volume.