When do you give yourself permission to quit a book?

I used to finish everything. Then I worked out roughly how many books I've got left in my life, which was bracing.

Current rule: your age subtracted from 100 is how many pages you have to give it. I'm 38, so a book gets 62 pages. Older me gets to be meaner.

@nadia_v · Steady contributor

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@rosalind_k

That's Nancy Pearl's rule, and it's a good one. Librarians have been handing it out for years.

@mara_oduya

This is the first time in my life I've looked forward to getting older.

@tobias_lind

I give nonfiction even less. If the argument hasn't shown up by chapter two, it's a magazine article with ambitions.

@gwen_ashby

I just stop halfway and tell people I'm "still reading it". I've been still reading Middlemarch since 2019.

@priya_rao

Is it weird that I skip to the end to decide whether to keep going?

@nadia_v

Yes. Please keep doing it.

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