BENGALURU : Have you ever started reading a book and been simply unable to finish reading it, even though you intended to? James Joyce’s 700-page epic Ulysses is considered one of the most unread books of all time i.e. most people who own the book have not read it in its entirety. James Latham, editor of the University of Tulsa-based James Joyce Quarterly, recently described Ulysses as probably “the most purchased and least read book in the world”. I have personally taken a stab at reading Ulysses but gave up after a few chapters. Now I am waiting for the release of the graphic novel adaptation of the book!
The question that intrigued me was, how do we really know whether or not a person finished reading a book? Thanks to Kindle and other e-readers, some data might be available to reveal the answer. In 2014, Prof. Jordan Ellenberg from University of Wisconsin-Madison invented the Hawking Index (HI) which uses Amazon e-book highlights data as a proxy for where people stopped reading the books they’ve purchased.
The Hawking Index uses the highlight function on the devices and apps to make a simple yet unscientific assumption: A book with popular passages marked all the way to the end indicates that many people made it through the entire story. On the contrary, if the most highlighted passages are clustered at the beginning of the book, the book is more likely to have been abandoned. Ulysses has a HI Score of 1.7 per cent and A Brief History of Time has 6.6 per cent while Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone has 95.9 per cent.
Even though I possess more books than I can ever read, I do intend to read most of them, though not in their entirety. I, for one, am comfortable with the idea that not all books need to be read in full, especially non-fiction business books (though I know many people deem it a sacrilege to not finish a book they’ve started reading). I have to admit that I did not finish Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things or Thomas Piketty’s Capital. I have not even tried to read the Harry Potter series beyond the first book!
In the Wall Street Journal, clinical psychologist Matthew Wilhelm states his belief that personality has something to do with the way books are read: certain types of people are more likely to finish reading a book. Dr Wilhelm theorises that people with competitive, Type-A personalities might be more likely to abandon a book because they tend to be motivated by reward and punishment, and “if there are no consequences or public recognition, why finish?” Conversely, he says, more laidback, Type-B personalities “may never start a book they know they won’t finish”.
“The more important motivator of finishing a book is social pressure,” says Dr Wilhelm, “which is why book clubs are so good at getting readers to the epilogue.” We often underestimate the power of accountability in getting things done. For me, every deadline for a column is a trigger to finish reading a book so that I could meaningfully write about it.
At a time when attention spans are at an all-time low, getting through a book without getting distracted seems like a herculean task. While a no-quit attitude is a good thing, continuing to read a book you don’t enjoy is like living in a bad relationship. At times we might find ourselves less and less motivated to make it to the end. No need to feel guilty as there is a quitter in every reader!(The author is a technologist based in Silicon Valley who is gently mad about books)