On Putting Down A Book

I've never been one who believed finishing a book proved something. I'm from the Costanza school. The most recent evidence to this belief was Dune, which I gave up on after 150+ pages. As a fact, there have actually been very few books I have given up, sent away to the literary bench.

Thursday I was prepared to give up on Atonement. I knew the plot (or lack there of, depending on the critic). I had seen the movie. Though that's a simple reason for abandonment, sometimes the writing pulls you in despite your objectivity. But such wasn't the case here either. I kept reading. Over the weekend I poured into 300+ pages. And I'm left with the same conclusion: I can put this book down and very much want too. It isn't particularly great. It's good. Introspective. A character study. But it's too extraneous. Too preachy and condemning. Too much prose devoid from substance. And most of all it's too long. At almost 500 pages and rather rambling around it's simple central thesis, you'd think it'd be shorter.

All of this is sufficient a reason, in my belief, to abandon the book. But why can't I? Why do I feel the need to finish this book? I want to move on. I've got another book lined up on the bookshelf, Love in the Ruins by Walker Percy, with a great opening line:

Now in these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A. and of the Christ-forgetting Christ-haunted death-dealing Western world I came to myself in a grove of young pines and the question came to me: has it happened at last?

That's a fantastic opening line. But still I hang on to complete this book that long ago became banal. Still I hang on, not expecting any of these reason to be atoned for in the book's final pages. After the opening line of Love in the Ruins I fought every urge to keep reading. Feeling as though I was cheating something by doing that. The book, it seems, will not let me go. It's stalking me.

Actually, it's more like a song that gets stuck in your head.

Didn't know books could do that.