I Wanted to Love This Book

Problem Is, I Couldn’t Even Finish It.

By Guest Contributing Writer Marc S. Friedman

*****

Recently, I did something that felt uncomfortably close to defeat. I stopped reading a book I had been genuinely excited about.

The book was Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.

The premise hooked me immediately. Klein and Thompson argue that American progressivism has drifted into becoming the party of “no,” blocking the very growth and development that could address the problems it claims to care about most. Housing. Clean energy. Healthcare. Education.

It is a serious argument, made by serious thinkers. Klein has spent years interrogating Democratic politics from inside the mainstream. Thompson has produced some of the most thoughtful long-form work on the American economy in recent memory.

I sat down to read with anticipation that felt almost personal. Sadly, that anticipation did not survive the first quarter of the book.

What I found instead was prose that felt airless, as if every sentence had been drained of oxygen. The writing carried the weight of responsibility so heavily that it could barely move. Page after page leaned on reports, studies, and dense layers of statistics, as if the argument needed constant reinforcement just to stand upright.

Something vital got lost in the process.

The ideas themselves should have felt alive, urgent, even combustible. Instead, they arrived muffled, buried beneath the machinery meant to prove them. I understand the instinct. In a polarized environment, evidence becomes armor. Citations become protection.

But armor is heavy. And over time, it can suffocate the person wearing it.

I stopped looking forward to my evenings in the reading chair at home. The book that had pulled me in with promise slowly turned into something I had to push through.

That shift, subtle at first, became undeniable.

After reading about a quarter of Abundance, I closed it and did not reopen it.

For me, that is not a casual decision. I finish almost everything I start. The first book I ever abandoned, years ago, felt like a quiet moral failure. Walking away from this one felt sharper. I had already invested in it before I even turned the first page. I wanted it to matter.

And yet the energy was gone. Continuing felt less like discipline and more like self-betrayal.

Part of what makes quitting so difficult is the pull of the sunk-cost effect. Once we invest time, attention, or belief into something, we feel compelled to continue, even when the return has clearly diminished. We see it in business decisions that spiral. In relationships that drag on long past their expiration. In habits we cannot quite justify but cannot quite release.

Reading is no exception.

But the time is already spent. It cannot be recovered. The only real question is whether continuing adds anything of value. If it does not, then pressing on is not persistence. It is inertia.

Seen this way, putting the book down did not feel like failure. It felt like clarity.

There is research that supports this instinct. Psychologist Carsten Wrosch has studied what he calls “goal disengagement,” the ability to walk away from pursuits that no longer serve us. Again and again, the findings point in the same direction. People who can let go when necessary experience less stress and greater overall well-being.

Finishing everything sounds like discipline. But it can quietly harden into rigidity, a virtue that has outlived its usefulness.

Even the data around reading habits offers a kind of humbling permission. Analyses of reader behavior show that many widely praised books are abandoned well before the halfway point. The drop-off is not rare. It is the norm.

The quiet truth is that most readers walk away more often than they admit.

There is also the simple matter of opportunity cost. Every hour spent grinding through a book that no longer moves you is an hour not spent discovering something that might. Decision strategist Annie Duke frames quitting not as weakness, but as skill. The key is to define your exit criteria in advance.

For reading, mine has become simple. If I stop looking forward to a book for a sustained period of time, I step away.

That is not indulgence. It is alignment.

So I moved on.

I picked up Hope Against Hope, Nadezhda Mandelstam’s account of life under Stalinist terror, written in the shadow of real danger, real consequence, real loss. From the first pages, it is impossible not to feel the stakes. The prose carries urgency. The sentences breathe.

And something in me responded immediately.

I found myself returning to the reading chair with anticipation again, not obligation. The difference was unmistakable.

I do not regret the time I spent with Abundance. Klein and Thompson are grappling with something real, something worth attention. Another reader may find the book indispensable.

But I do not regret stopping either. Because that decision created space. And in that space, something better found me.

Finishing every book is not what makes a serious reader. What matters is sustaining a reading life that remains alive, curious, and responsive. Sometimes that requires endurance. Sometimes it requires letting go.

The ability to quit is not weakness.

It is discernment.

And without it, the love of reading quietly dies.

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