strategies
see also
reading notes on AOFSo far so good: According to the bottom of my Kindle screen, I’ve made it 40% of the way through the age of federalism—slow progress, but progress nonetheless!
I’m trying to avoid this book going the way of Simon Schama’s citizens, which I abandoned after so much time banging my head against it. Like citizens, aof is a chunk of a book; like citizens, it discusses a topic I’m deeply interested in; like citizens, it’s constantly insightful. And yet, like citizens, however desperately I want to read it, want to like it, sometimes I just can’t keep my attention on it.
A few strategies have helped me to keep reading and enjoying the age of federalism:
1. Don’t look at how far you have left to go. I know I’m 40% through because I checked for this post, but I turn the progress view off when I’m reading. This takes some of the pressure off from the book’s immensity.
2. Use an e-reader. This helps both physically and psychologically. Or in how physicality affects psychology. Physiopsychologically. These gigantic books are unwieldy, heavy, and tiring to hold in physical form. And why for Godsake are books like citizens and aof always set in the tiniest type ever cut by man? In their best forms, books are delightful objects. But these tomes are onerous; they make you want to put them down. In an e-book, I can set the view to meet my nearsighted needs and read on, blissfully unintimidated by the number of pages that lie before me.
3. Skim, skim, skim. No one can tell you otherwise—It’s perfectly fine to skip through parts that are boring to get to the parts that really interest you. Most books (especially histories like these, with their endless tangential digressions) have both. Careful scrutiny of every word is worthwhile sometimes, but there’s a lot to be said for grazing.
4. Don’t push if you’re not in the mood. Sometimes a thousand–page political, economical, and intellectual history of the American revolution is not the vibe. The moment it becomes an obligation and a chore, all hope is lost.
I tend to have several different kinds of books going at once, making it easy to switch to whatever feels right in a given moment. Of course, finishing any one of them takes longer this way, but… who cares?!
5. Take a break. It’s a marathon, etc. Maybe it’s a break to explore related works or primary sources. I’ve been doing a lot of this with aof: pausing to look up the texts of letters between the founders that are mentioned, to revisit Paine & common sense after the section discussing his influence, to read Hannah Arendt’s on revolution after the chapter on the French revolution.
Maybe, as in Number 4 above, it’s a break from this kind of book for another. Or maybe it’s just a break from reading anything, or to take a nap.
6. Accept that you will abandon some books. Accept that this is ok. Sometimes there’s no getting around it. Life is too short and miserable to add more misery voluntarily. There is no moral imperative to read any particular book, and it’s no moral failing to stop partway through one, either. There are always plenty of others on the shelf.