Finishing from the Start

I'm on page 830 of a book that weighs in at just over 1,000 pages.  I started it over 2 years ago, put it down for awhile, realized I hadn't retained anything, restarted from the beginning, started taking notes to retain the information better, realized I wasn't enjoying it as much that way, then made a New Year's resolution to finish it by April of this year.  Here I am in August with almost 200 pages to go. 

My slowness in reading it has not been for lack of discipline or desire.  I very much enjoy reading it, and I read often enough.  My concern has been reading it right.  Not that there's any one right way to read a book.  What I mean is, reading it the way I really want to, maximizing both my enjoyment of it and its educational benefits.  It's dense and packed with difficult-to-remember names, places, and ideas, so I don't find it beneficial to fly through it like a novel.  But at the same time, I don't find it desirable to read it like I'm studying for a test.   I've taken my time in finding a good balance--a pace that's not too quick to remember, but not too slow to enjoy.

At various times, I've been tempted to feel discouraged with how long it has taken me.  A few times, I even thought about stopping, wondering how many other good books I'm missing out on for this one.  It feels good to be so close to the end of it.  A pride of accomplishment seems to always accompany the act of finishing a book.  But I find a more worthwhile pride in the fact that I took pleasure in it, as well as having retained a reasonable amount of the material. 

There are times to just be done with something, and then there are times to finish. We can be done with something in an instant.  Ironically, finishing has meaning for each present moment, beginning to end.  So then, when we decide something is worth finishing, the important question is never "Am I finished yet?" but "Am I finishing right now?"