Compulsive Reading

Posted by Melissa Howard Apr 30, 2008

You started the book because it was a classic or because it seemed interesting when you picked it off the shelf at the library. After twenty-five pages, you put it down. Several days later you pick it up again and read ten more pages. You keep picking it up because it haunts you.

The haunting by this book isn't because it is so compelling. It isn't. You've already decided it is the stupidest book you've ever read but you keep picking it up. Leaving a book unfinished is like leaving food on your plate. Some starving child in Africa wants your food and some illiterate child in the ghetto wants your book. You must finish.

In steps Sarah Nelson, she writes "Allowing yourself to stop reading a book - at page 25, 50, or even, less frequently, a few chapters from the end - is a rite of passage in a reader's life, the literary equivalent of a bar mitzvah or a communion, the moment at which you look at yourself and announce: Today I am an adult. I can make my own decisions."

Alleluia!!