My question is to readers of academic books. Is it ok to say that I have read a book if after midway through a book I am convinced of the main points an author is making and do not wish to continue to the very end. For instance, I have been reading Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge for a while now. I have made it to halfway and think I have got his main propositions. Is it ok to claim I have read this book? What are your views on this?
This is not a troll post for sure. Trolls dont read michael polanyi’s Personal Knowledge. I am a professor!! :)
This was a question for academic readers who dont read a book cover to cover, for good reasons (sometimes arguments are repititive and sometimes guessable). I wanted to know what readers of such books call “having read a book”.
There’s a huge difference between leisure reading, educational reading, and academic reading, and I see why your question is upsetting a lot of people.
Givenn that you are a professor I assume you maybe went through a PhD program and had some sort of comprehensive exams? At least in the US system and within the humanities that is usually a requirement. One element of it is creating and working through a reading list of maybe 200 titles that represent the state of the field.
You need to read it to pass the exam - but nobody reads 15 books cover to cover on the Medieval Mediterranean. You read some cover to cover, the introduction to all of them, and the chapters that set them apart for a few. You read academic reviews- lots of them. The important thing is that you know where to look it up now when your research pushes you into a certain area, and that you can talk about its contents without having to know in detail what Professor Simpson says on page 306 of her 900 page behemoth of a dissertation on Mesopotamian Pottery.
You’ve read her book though if you can summarize her thesis