Have you ever had the experience when you are reading a book and you notice that your attention keeps wandering to the page number, and without thinking about it your mind starts to calculate the number of pages left to be read? And perhaps the distance read thus far as a percentage of the total book? That can just be me! I always think of it as a clear warning sign, that I have caught myself reading the book just to get to the end, not for pleasure.

Sometimes that’s just how it has to be. You need to grit your teeth and get to the end of the book. Perhaps you are reading a set text on a course, are in a particularly strict book club, or consider not finishing a novel a personal failure. But if you are free from those pressures and still catch yourself counting the pages remaining, that’s surely time to pause and re-evaluate your reading choices. Why are you reading this novel if you can’t wait for it to end?

I see a lot of bloggers online writing about their ‘TBR’ list – books they have bought or chosen as ones they want to read, or have agreed to review. Rather than seeing that list as a menu of things to look forward to, books to enjoy and savour, the list becomes oppressive. People write about thinning down their TBR inventory as if it is a to-do list of burdensome chores. For example someone I follow wrote the following about novels on their December 2019 TBR

“In any event, if these books aren’t completed by December 31st, I’m done with them. I’m not ‘taking’ them into 2020 with me.”

Well do you want to read them or don’t you? Rather than using some arbitrary date to tidy up your list of chores.

I’m not trying to be holier-than-thou about this – I am as guilty as the next person of slipping into this way of thinking – “I’ve read X number of pages today” or “Only another 100 pages and I will have finished Novel Y” rather than “What a great writer novelist Z is”. But I realise it’s not healthy, and over time can erode one’s passion for reading. So my advice? Perhaps this sounds trite, but I can only summarise it thus – don’t read for pleasure books that you don’t find pleasurable. If you aren’t enjoying a novel (and you have given it a fair chance to grab your interest) stop reading it, – perhaps put it aside and go back to it later when your appetite for the genre has returned. No-one will judge you for it, honest. And if your TBR list is getting you down, strip off everything apart from those novels that you genuinely want to read – make it a WTR list.