Skipping and skimming

I've noticed some readers questioning whether listening to a book being read counts as actually reading the book. I have never had such doubts. I've read a good many books without ever turning a page but simply listening to CDs in my car.

Watching a movie adapted from a novel doesn't count as reading the book, despite what many high school essayists have pretended, but listening to books certainly counts as reading them. Otherwise, those with vision problems could never get credit for reading anything.

A more difficult question, to my mind, has to do with skimming and skipping. Can you claim to have read Moby-Dick if you skipped those many chapters filled with minutia about whales and whaling? If you skim the descriptive passages in a novel to get back to the action can you still say you read the book? Or what about reading a condensed book? (Does Reader's Digest still print these?) With a condensed book, someone else has done the skimming and skipping for you.

Lord Balfour

I tend to agree with Lord Balfour, who said, "He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming."

No reader is obligated to read every word an author writes.  Some passages are simply dull and unnecessary. That's how Reader's Digest was able to cut out two-thirds of a novel while keeping the essential story. Publishers seem to think a book must have at least 300 pages, meaning that many authors must pad their manuscripts, like high schoolers trying to reach 500 words in an essay.

One can, of course, carry skimming and skipping too far. If you read the first couple of chapters of a mystery, then skip to the last chapter to see who the murderer is, it doesn't count as reading the book. But passing over a few words and sentences along the way is not something any reader should feel guilty about.