on measurement

The redoubtable Andy, whose statistically-inspired musings you can enjoy here, asks:

I've been sitting here dumbfounded for the past day trying to figure out when if ever I will have the wherewithal to read 210 books in a single calendar year. I am wondering however, for my own records, what it takes for you to consider a book "read." For example, I got about 275 pages into The Brothers Karamazov earlier this year before putting it down. Given that it is 600 pages, would you count that as a book, or a half a book, or nothing?

I am pretty much a fundamentalist on this, except when I'm not. Dostoyevsky gets you half credit for reading half the book, but not much beyond that. Done is done, so nothing for reading 60 pages, 150, or whatever else. My wife once threw down Thomas Pynchon's Vineland literally 20 pages from the end because she found it so irritating. I could never do that. So there you have it. I could try to reconstruct total pages read, but that's too nuts even for me. I think. I bet you'd enjoy these new bikes at the JCC, though.

Comments

[Ben Casnocha]

I measure books "read" if you consume 51% or more. Just like you "own" a company if you own 51% or more.

I feel pity for those who cannot ignore sunk costs and thus feel a compulsion to finish a book even when they would rather not.

[Jesse]

"Sunk costs"? If I didn't think it was worth starting, I didn't start it. So I, uh, anticipated that in my budgeting of the time in the first place. Besides, you want to incentivize finishing, as you might put it, yeah? So the rewards, such as they are, come from completion.