It's not like I didn't try. I did try. I really did. You must believe me.
In fact, I tried repeatedly. But every time I picked up a copy of "Precious Bane," Mary Webb's 1924 novel about the travails of a woman named Prue Sarn from rural Shropshire, England, I would get itchy. I would get fidgety. I would get completely bogged down around page 8 or 9. (No, I never made it out of the single digits.) I would let the book fall from my fingers, accompanied by a weary, rueful, so-sorry-about-this sigh, and a quiet spasm of guilt and shame.
Now, "Precious Bane" is a perfectly respectable book. Many people appear to cherish this sturdy, uplifting tale. Indeed, the reason I kept trying to make a go of it is because a graduate school colleague, a sweet woman named Jean, kept pressing it into my hands with an earnest, "You must read this. It changed my life!"
Well, it changed mine too, but not in the way that poor Jean intended. It persuaded me that giving up on a book is one of the most difficult, challenging things we ever do.
Turning the channel when a TV series fails to charm? Exiting a movie theater when the film is a stinker? Slinking out of a theater when the play seems pointless or boring? No problem.
But setting aside a book after you have made the effort to start it? Very, very, very hard.
I am not certain why this is so. We are, by all accounts, a nation with a frantically short attention span; moreover, we don't mind who knows it. We rather enjoy our reputation for snap judgments and take-no-prisoners critical tastes. Read the comments section of websites dealing with cultural products -- TV shows, movies, magazines -- and you'll see just how much we love to slash and burn the pastimes that don't captivate us, how quickly we shoo them away. We love discarding substandard entertainments with the heartless elan of supermodels flinging away personal assistants. We're tough to please -- and proud of it.
Books, though, are a different story. With books, the social expectation is that -- like a toddler with broccoli -- you will finish what you start, even if you find it hard to swallow. There is an overarching principle at stake. You will honor your commitment. To abandon a book feels all wrong. If you do it, you look around warily, half-expecting to see your middle-school English teacher in the corner, giving you a gravely disappointed glare.
