I repeat this mantra often, and it’s especially true when I’ve been in a reading slump. I just saw it summarized nicely by Angela Whited, the community sales coordinator and storyteller at Red Balloon Bookshop:

Whited also revealed another secret about reading more books: If a book is boring, she’ll quit.

I’ve always struggled with that idea. Quitting a book feels like defeat. I started it. Why not finish it?

But those books are a grind and the process feels arduous and less enjoyable.

Whited said that’s OK.

“You can quit in the middle if you don’t like it,” she said. “You only will live so long. You would never read all the books you want to read. And so this is how we read so many books at the bookstore. We don’t finish the ones we’re not loving. You’ve got your to-be-read pile. Are you ever going to get through it? I’m not going to get through mine. It’s OK if you don’t love it. That book is for somebody else.”

-Myron Medcalf, “My quest to read more books led me to ‘reading therapist’ in St. Paul,” Sept. 9, 2023, Star Tribune