Life is short; pretence is tiring. I stopped three books this month — one because the prose performed cleverness without warmth, one because the subject deserved better research, one because I recognised my own argument and grew bored hearing it echoed.
The clever book had excellent reviews. Every sentence sparkled and none of them invited me to stay. I made it to page ninety and felt like I was at a party where everyone spoke beautifully about nothing.
The poorly researched book angered me — not because it was wrong about facts I could verify, but because it was careless about lives it described. Some topics require shoes worn thin from walking, not wings from a desk.
The third book argued something I agree with, at length, without surprise. Agreement without discovery is like eating when you are not hungry — technically possible, spiritually pointless.
Abandoning is data. It tells you what you value on a given Tuesday. I used to finish everything out of stubbornness, as if the author would know and be wounded. They would not. Authors learn abandonment early.
Now I finish what finishes something in me. The abandoned books go back to the library or the second-hand stall on South Bridge Road, where someone else's Tuesday might need exactly what I rejected.