Even as the world is slowly but steadily disintegrating around us, we turn to our personal cope strategies just to survive each day. Me, I turn to books, try to lose myself in that world of make-believe. But of late, I seem to have lost all desire to plough through books that do not hold, or quickly lose, my attention and interest.
There are people who pick up a book, skim through the blurbs, study the jacket illustration, glance through the first few pages, then decide the book is/isn’t for them, and either buy it or pass.
I envy that lot. Because I usually pick a read after much deliberation, less influenced by the blurbs than the synopsis, at times intrigued by the cover but ultimately falling back on what I know of the author. Then I start the read. Sometimes, by Chapter Two I know it’s a turkey but I hang on with grim determination till I reach the last page, hoping to mine what seem pretty well-hidden gems.
Long years of intent reading (and reviewing) have shown me that sometimes one gets to the meat of the matter only after a quarter of the book is read. While I still firmly hold onto that creed when I read for review, I find I am fast losing my patience with books I read for pleasure. Unwittingly, I’m applying the formerly famous ‘Mari Kondo method’: no more plodding through these joyless objects. If it doesn’t work for me after I’m 40 pages down, that’s it, I’m done, and I put it aside, to donate to the neighbourhood library or exchange it for a discount at my favourite bookstore.