What Makes a Reader Stop Reading?

I can now stop without guilt, thanks to my “zero tolerance” fiction policy

Image credit: my own books from childhood

I don’t know that I was ever formally taught this, but for most of my life, I believed if I started a book, I had to finish it. No one ever sat me down and said, “Wash your hands before eating, make your bed when you get out of it, and finish every book you start,” so I’m not sure where I came up with this. (For the record, I do wash my hands regularly, though the bed-making is hit or miss, depending on whether I’m the last one awake. But . . . back to the book stuff.)

Perhaps it was easier back in the day when there were fewer books available for me to read. After all, there was no such thing as a digital book — or even a personal computer, for that matter — when I was growing up, so any books I read, I either owned or borrowed from the library.

When I was very young, I was afraid of someday running out of books to read.

Our town library was pretty small, and I plowed through the children’s section in short order, followed by the juvenile fiction a few years later. By the time I moved beyond that, though, I had no worries about a lack of reading material.