Completing the process

I've also come to feel that if I don't write about a book in a review or essay, then I haven't actually read it.

Michael Dirda, Browsings

Michael Dirda

My own feeling, as I've expressed previously, is not that I haven't read a book if I haven't written about it, but more that I haven't quite finished reading it. It's like a sentence without a period at the end, a symphony without the applause, a prayer without an amen.

This is the power of habit, I know. Both Michael Dirda and I have, from the habit of years, gotten used to writing about the books we read. The writing is how we focus our minds on what we've read. It's how we process it, how we understand it, how we determine what it really means, at least to us.

There are some books I read, such as a David Baldacci thriller, that I really have nothing I want to say about. A book may, in fact, be thrilling. It may be as good as I had hoped. But so what? What is there to write, other than a brief synopsis of the plot?

Yet often I will place these books on my writing table for weeks after I've read them. Something seems incomplete. I feel the need to say something, even when there is nothing of consequence to say. Finally I will put the book on a shelf or in a box, or perhaps get rid of it altogether. Books I don't write about I am less inclined to keep.