The art of not finishing a book

Tsundoju: A Japanese term for the habit of buying books, then leaving them unread in a pile

In his ‘Life of Samuel Johnson’, James Boswell records that on the moning of Tuesday, June 15, 1784, the great man commented on the advice of a certain Reverend Herbert Croft to a former pupil that if you start a book then you should always finish it.

“This is surely a strange advice,” harrumphed Johnson. “You may as well resolve that whatever men you happen to get acquainted with, you are to keep to them for life. A book may be good for nothing; or there may be only one thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through?”

Until the mid-1990s, I was of the exact opposite opinion. Inspired by Magnus Magnusson, my guiding maxim was ‘I’ve started, so I’ll finish’. Even when the going got rough, I reminded myself that I had chosen (indeed, shelled out hard cash for) this book, that some spark had already been lit, and that it was my duty to the author and to my own self-worth that I see it through to the bitter end.