this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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Often, I don't. If I think there is a good chance of a payoff, though... I start skimming the crap. I've learned to skim through stuff until something of import comes up, and then I step back a couple paragraphs and start reading again.
I don't know how you'd learn this, but I learned it back in high school when I needed to find information in the textbook quickly, but couldn't afford to actually read every page on the way. It was massively successful back then, and now both.
If after skimming like 1/4 of a book I haven't found anything interesting again, I almost always quit, though. It's really unlikely that a book with that much content that I don't care about will have anything that I value later.
That said... I have skimmed entire books on re-read. Some of the middle Wheel of Time books, for example. And some were so bad that I just read a summary, instead of skimming. But I like the first books enough that it was worth it for the ending, which was decent, but not mind-blowing like I'd hoped. (I "re-read" them when the later books finally came out and I wanted a refresher.)
Oh Wheel of Time. I love them for the most part, but I just couldn't care less about a whole book of Elaine playing politics for the Lion Throne. Then there was the book that was mostly just devoted to taking care of a drought. I get the latter is the Dark One's shadow falling on the world and all, but the boredom it invoked felt like the Dark One's shadow on my mind.
I’ve been stuck in Winter’s Heart for months, maybe even approaching a year now. I might finish it by the time i have grandkids.
That is certainly the worst of "the slog". I would just get an audiobook version and listen to it while you exercise, eat, or do other such tasks.
I used to do this but I forgot I did it.