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?
“I’ve read some of their work.” To say you read the book is just sloppy language. And it’s okay to be sloppy with your words if people get your meaning. But the fact that you’re asking tells me you’re not okay with that slight misstatement
What is the context in which you are making that claim? Because in a conversation you could just explain it in the same way you did here and with a lot of book tracking tools you can remove it from the books you’re currently reading and just leave it at 50%.
If it’s just a personal thing for you to check off, then sure why not? I personally don’t count an unfinished book as ‘read’, I just say DNF - did not finish, or read half, etc. If it’s not a specific academic requirement to read the whole thing then who cares?
You can’t say that you’ve read a book, like using those exact words “I read this book,” if you haven’t finished it. How about, “I’ve read some of Book Title”?
no, you read half of it. You have read a book when you’ve read all of it
What the hell is this question?
Why don’t you also say you climbed Everest? You’ve heard about it and get the gist of what it would be like, so you might as well just go ahead and cross that off the bucket list, champ! Wow, I didn’t realize you were also a veteran of the Second World War! I mean, you heard about it and think you know what happened, so I’m sure you’ll tell me you served, too.
More importantly: who are you trying to impress by saying you’ve read a book that you haven’t? Like anyone who’s actually read the book will see through you, anyone who hasn’t won’t give a shit. Is it to pat yourself on the back? For what? Not finishing something?
Did you get hit in the head with a rock?
If I start mowing my lawn and about halfway though I say, “I think my lawn realizes what I’m trying to accomplish here”, and stop, I have not mowed my lawn.
This is what happens when you are too eager to create a metaphor without realizing subtle differences that completely undermines the metaphor.
Reading a book is not like mowing your lawn. Its more like watching a movie. And there are some parts of the movie one can speed up or even skip without missing the whole of the movie. This is especially so for academic books, which was the explicit context. Of course I would not say I have read One Hundred Years of solitude if I have only read it till the half. But academic books do not follow a suspenseful plot. Most arguments are raised at the beginning and then there is a progressive explanation and detailing of particular views. My question was for people who read this style of book.
This is an absurd question, and I’m assuming a troll post. Regardless, I ask a counter question to get at the heart of the matter:
Who are you saying that you’ve read a book to, and why would they care? I can’t imagine why it would matter to somebody else whether or not you have read a book, let alone how much of it.
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
Just…say you read some of it-