Rule of fifty

Life's too short to read a bad book. Actually, I decided a few years ago that life's too short for a lot of things, but I'll focus on books for now. You see, I've been reviewing the titles on my TBR (to be read) list and it's now longer than ever. I didn't manage to achieve my Goodreads reading challenge last year but have reset it once again to 24 books in 2017, or approximately one every two weeks. It doesn't sound like much but when my brain is at full to overload capacity, reading is one of the first pleasures to drop off.

I plan to stay on track with my reading challenge this year. Yes, really. You see, this year I have a strategy. I'm getting better at choosing books I'll finish but still struggle to abandon a book part-way through. It's just not in my nature to stop pursuing something; even if it takes forever, I'll finish it one day.

Book lover Nancy Pearl has come up with a true pearlism. It's called the rule of fifty and makes perfect sense to me as a reader. To quote Nancy Pearl:

"If you're fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up.

If you're over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100. The result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.

Since that number gets smaller and smaller as we get older and older, our big reward is that when we turn 100, we can judge a book by its cover!"

I still have many years until I can judge a book by its cover, but for now I'll give the rule of fifty a go and hopefully meet (or exceed) my reading goal as a result.