Handyandy58 t1_jebq6w0 wrote on March 30, 2023 at 9:13 PM

Reply to comment by Davidstarr86 in Do you skip or skim when reading fiction? by GraniteGeekNH

Yeah this comes across a lot on here. As if it is sinful to stop reading books, or there is some sort of personal XP bar that goes up with every book "read" and has some sort of moral weight to it. I think a lot of people treat reading too seriously compared to other artforms. You would rarely see someone taken to task for skipping songs on an album or quitting a TV show halfway through a season. But here we have daily threads of people wracked with guilt about how they might not be reading something the right way. Very strange.

Sumtimesagr8notion t1_jed6hus wrote on March 31, 2023 at 3:45 AM

I don't really ever see people getting shamed for skipping books. I do see countless posts of insecure people looking for validation because they didn't finish a book. These literature bullies don't really exist, it's just weird people who need the internet to tell them they it's ok to read YA books, or quit a book half way through

Olorin_Ever-Young t1_jee5wje wrote on March 31, 2023 at 11:11 AM

Not listening to all the songs on an album, or not finishing a TV show, is in no way equivalent to "reading" a novel by skipping every other page.

That'd be like watching a movie by fast forwarding past certain scenes, or skipping the first minute of a song.

Character_Vapor t1_jefj3rz wrote on March 31, 2023 at 5:14 PM

> As if it is sinful to stop reading books

There's nothing wrong with no finishing a book you're not into. Nothing at all.

Bout routinely just skipping chunks of books because you can't be bothered to put in the effort of experiencing the book the way it was written? Also fine I guess, no one will stop you, but it doesn't seem like you actually value these books as being worth your time or worth paying attention to. It's a failure of curiosity.