Trust Your Instincts - Life Is Too Short To Read Boring Books!

Once upon a time I thought that I should read pretty much everything. Anything I could get my hands on, no matter what the genre, no matter what the subject matter. So I did. But I didn’t enjoy it. In fact, after finishing some of the books, I wondered to myself what I could have done with the time that I had spent (wasted) reading a book I hadn’t enjoyed.

What other books could I have read instead?

What else could I have done?

So I stopped reading pretty much everything. I began to read only those books that intrigued me enough – through their blurb and, yes, their cover – to make me want to read them. It was that wanting that made the impact, rather than the needing. If I needed to read a book (for school, university, because others had suggested it and wanted to hear my opinion) it just wasn’t the same as wanting to because it was a subject or an author that interested me.

I realised that life is very short indeed, and that there are more books out there than I could ever possibly hope to read, which is wonderful in a way, but deeply depressing in another. And reading books that just don’t grab me, or rather continuing to read them even after I have realised that I’m not enjoying the story or the writing or whatever, takes up too much of my precious time.

I was reminded of this recently, when I read Cujo by StephenKing. Now, I’m a big King fan (I like his short stories best, but The Shining has a special place in my horrified heart), but for some reason I had always put off reading this particular book. Something about the subject matter – rabid dog terrorises small town – just didn’t interest me, so I didn’t go near it. But then, I was browsing in my local library and had a craving for King. Yes, I have plenty of his books at home, but I wanted something new. The only King book that the library had that I hadn’t read was Cujo, so I went for it.

I should have returned it the next day. I should have realised immediately that my instincts had been right all along, and that this was not the book for me. I don’t know whether it was a feeling of wanting to be loyal to Stephen King, or because I wanted to like it, but I read the whole thing. And I was disappointed.

I didn’t enjoy the book, just as I’d always suspected would be the case, but I read it anyway. Never again.

Life’s just too short for that.