DNFs and Re-reads
On finishing/not finishing books, and re-reading favourites versus seeking out new reads.
In the days when I didn’t just ride a bike but raced pretty regularly, having a DNF against my name was never a good thing. Worst case, it might mean I’d had a crash or major mechanical problem. In bunched races, which were never my forte, it usually meant I’d been shelled out the back early on and couldn’t see the point of carrying on. But in time trials, which were my best (or least worst) discipline, it pretty much always meant I’d been having an off day and just thrown in the towel. In any case, it was never something to be proud of.
Should I look at not finishing a book the same way? I think not. Reading is not a competitive sport; I’m not even competing against myself, and I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone with my reading.
It’s hard to imagine an author who is not a reader first.
Terry Pratchett
My attitude towards the DNF is perhaps coloured by having had a library card for 60 years. For the last 18 I’ve lived just five minutes walk from our local branch library. I also worked for several years as a porter in Lancaster University Library, which also gave me access to an immense range of books (plus the late evening shifts gave abundant down-time…). One beauty of libraries, I think, is that you can pick up any book that looks even vaguely intriguing, and if you throw in the towel after ten pages—which I did last week with The ********* ********—it’s cost nothing but a little time. And why not? Life’s too short to plough through books that aren’t really giving you anything. But also, as we’ll see, it’s certainly not too short to re-read those books that keep on giving.
One of the first books I can recall DNF’ing was A Glastonbury Romance. Goodreads calls it John Cowper Powys's masterwork, an epic novel of terrific cumulative force and lyrical intensity. Goodreads didn’t exist at the time, but a good friend had recommended it highly. However I found it turgid, pretentious, and entirely uninvolving.
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow. Utterly incomprehensible.
James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake. Ditto (I did finish Ulysses, and that was sort of OK, but isn’t on my re-read list.)
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain. Got a fair way in, looked at how much of the book was still in my right hand, and lost heart. I ought to try again, for two reasons:
1: I’ve read Buddenbrooks twice and really enjoyed it. Maybe it’s a translation problem and I just need a different version of The Magic Mountain.
2: I’ve actually stayed at the Hotel Schatzalp, generally reckoned to have been the original for the sanatorium in the book. (I’d never have been able to afford it, but I was on a freelance assignment, and Swiss Tourism is great. Hands down the best press trips I’ve ever been on too.)
Jane Eyre. I know millions adore it, and I’ve tried twice, but just can’t get into it. I really don’t think there’ll be a third attempt.
The Palliser Novels. OK, I’ve actually made it halfway through the series, and part-way into Phineas Redux, but there the energy ran out. But I may one day summon the fortitude to finish the job, so is this technically a DNF at all?
And then there are many 'lesser' books (The Da Vinci Code, something by Jeffrey Archer) that I haven’t finished and am not in the least embarrassed to admit it. It’s a long list.
Of course it’s not good to give up too readily (that’s why I picked up Jane Eyre a second time). It may be contemporary orthodoxy that a book needs to grab the reader by the throat in the first paragraph, but there are a lot of great books that don’t. Pride and Prejudice may have one of the most-quoted first lines in all of English literature, but it doesn’t quite have the visceral immediacy of It was the day my grandmother exploded. The rest of the first chapter (Austen, not Banks), the conversation between Mr and Mrs Bennett, relies on irony, and subtly pokes fun at both. If you don’t get that, you may well think What’s all the fuss about? When do we get to Colin Firth in a wet shirt? (Spoiler alert: we don’t. Not in the book, and not in any of the film/TV adaptations bar one.)
Samuel Johnson said What is written without effort is generally read without pleasure. And there are plenty of cases where the reader’s pleasure requires the reader to invest a little effort. The trick is knowing when the effort is likely to be repaid, and when you’re just flogging a dead horse. Faulkner: worth the effort (at least I thought so, thirty years ago). Pynchon: for me, definitely not.
Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.
Annie Proulx
So let’s turn that frown upside down and look at some favourite re-reads. I’ve never kept count (I’m not that much of a nerd) but there are a few contenders for my most-read titles.
JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. Yeah, I know, cliché. But for quite a chunk of my life I re-read it on pretty much an annual basis, which suggests I might be up to at least twenty by now. I’m a fast reader and probably skated over some passages on repeat reads, but with a book/trilogy of that length it must still account for quite a few hours of my life. Well, there are worse ways…
Ursula K Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness, Malafrena, The Earthsea Trilogy. Hard to know whether LHOD or Malafrena is in the lead. If I had to guess I’d say LHOD simply because I discovered it earlier… but on the other hand, Malafrena was the one where my original paperback copy fell apart and had to be replaced (but only when I’d tracked down a copy of the same edition). Earthsea won’t be far behind. I am of course well aware that there are five books, but Tenar and The Other Wind did come along somewhat later. I received a copy of the beautiful combined collection, The Books of Earthsea, as a present from my partner last Christmas and by New Year I’d read them all through again. (The Introduction and linking essays are fabulous too).
I’ve tried to unravel some of the reasons I love Le Guin so much in an earlier Post. I’ve also Posted a Tolkien-related piece, but with a different slant.
Arthur Ransome, Swallows and Amazons (and indeed all five of his 'lake country' books). As I’ve related, I’ve first read Swallows and Amazons when I was about nine, so I did get a head start. But this is a little different as I’ve written books and articles, and done a few talks, on Ransome and his connections to the Lake District, so I’ve had to re-read them a few times 'for work'. But hey, as a writer, everything you read counts as work of a kind, doesn’t it? And reading Ransome is always a pleasure.
Becky Chambers, the Wayfarers series. Chambers’ series, starting with The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, renewed my faith in science fiction at a time when I was drifting away from it. Yes, it happens in the future, and yes, in Long Way… nearly all the story unfolds on a single spaceship, and, yes, there are aliens in it; but that’s the point. The aliens are people too and in fact the whole point of the story is not technology but people. In the same way that the best of Star Trek does, Chambers adroitly uses alien-ness to highlight aspects of humanity. The term 'character-driven' seems to have been called into question lately, so I’ll just echo the words of one reviewer: 'a quietly profound, humane, tour de force'.
I think this post is in danger of running long, so I’ll just quickly name a few more authors I’m always happy to return to: Kate Atkinson, Dorothy L Sayers, Iain (M) Banks, Terry Pratchett, Jane Austen. And one final book: To Kill a Mockingbird. My god, if you’re going to be a one-hit wonder, that’s the way to do it.
There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.
Ursula K. Le Guin
I guess there’s one more category I should mention: the re-reads that fall short of expectations. Or, in some cases, deliver a crushing disappointment. But I’m looking at how long this post is already, and thinking this should be explored in more depth, so I think I’ll leave this aspect for another time.
I went 50 years without a DNF but now I’ve had 3 or 4 in the last year. All classics. All other people’s favourites.
Sometimes it can just be hitting the right moment, for me at any rate. Between the ages of about 15 and 20, I think I made about 5 attempts to read Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. Since then I must have reread it at least 5 times. I have never been able to finish Wuthering Heights, on the other hand.