I don't think it's a problem. I'd say to follow your nose, and read what you like.

My view is that novels have been accorded a cultural importance out of proportion to their actual value (when compared to poetry, short stories, essays, etc.) It seems to me that this fetishisation of the novel is even more pronounced in the English-speaking world than elsewhere.

Having said that, I still read and enjoy novels, but fewer, in proportion to my reading as a whole, than I once did.

Ummm...

So the problem is that you like fiction stories too much? That you find it too absorbing?

I don't think it's a problem that you don't read novels. Whatever. I really don't read modern fiction all that much either - there's just such a weird cultural thing around them now. Either they're "literary fiction" and thus sort of pretentious and have this ponderous self-acknowledgement about them, or they're "airport reading," or "chick lit," and it's somehow anti-intellectual for me to enjoy them.

If you'd LIKE to read fiction but are afraid of losing a weekend at a time, try short stories - then just read and absorb one at a time. I've got oodles of recommendations.

It might come off as a bit elitist to say you don't read novels, only factual books. People might be more understanding if you explain the context of getting too involved in them. Why not just force yourself to put them down after an hour or at a chapter break? On the other hand, just read what you want and forget what anyone thinks. I do feel there's a lot of value, kinds of truth and ways of looking at things, that can be gotten from novels that can't be had in factual books. I like them both. I'm not even sure which I read more of.

I agree with misteraitch... novels seem to be given too much importance as a kind of badge of intellectualism.

I don't really see why the four thousand and twenty-seventh literary novel about a college professor having an affair contributes so much to humanity.

I suggest you fight snobbery with snobbery. Find a volume or two of obscure poetry. If possible, get them from another culture, try the Vedas, or if your French is up to it Apollinaire or Rimbaud. Then when asked about novels, explain patronizingly that you would love to read more novels, but frankly after the exquisite perfection of Sanskrit verse you find novels a little too verbose...

To be more clear, I love novels. I get absolutely absorbed in the good one, and I really enjoy that lingering absorbtion, but I can see how that's a problem for some people. My main point is that you should utterly reject the idea that you're less of a person because you don't read them. I think an appropriate response would be something along the lines of a carefree laugh and some anecdote like, "Well, you know, George Washington only read military biographies, and he was President of the United States!" or something like that. (Tailor to your own cultural heros).

I'm pretty much the opposite of you in terms of reading speed -- it takes me forever to finish a book, in part because I'm so busy writing and editing my own and other people's work that it doesn't leave much time for recreational reading. So books, even fiction, get set down for days and weeks before being picked up again.

Maybe the key is to find novels that are broken up into short, episodic chapters, or collections of short fiction so you don't get as tied up.

While this may not be true of the entire issue, the way you've framed it here is very competitive -- you started your reading kick to break a record, you're comparing yourself against your family, even the way you describe needing to stay up all night or all week to finish something sounds like a race. Is there a way you can find to enjoy the process rather than the end result?

I have the same "OMG WANT TO KEEP READING THIS FOREVER" thing, but it's actually what I most love about good novels, that sense of wanting to be immersed in that world constantly and that feeling of sadness when it's done. I like thinking about the book when I'm at work and can't read it, or dreaming about it at night. It's like having another world inside me, working on me, that no one else can see.

What I actually think makes it easier to deal with, maybe paradoxically, is reading more good literature; if I know that this sort of escape/immersion is always available to me, in one form or another, it makes each particular foray a bit less fraught.

A practical tip might be get into re-reading, which for me gets me out of that "Must find out what happens!" mindset and into a more "What wonderful language!" savoring place. Or maybe find novels that are less plot-driven and more language- or character-driven? Not necessarily modern stuff, if you don't like it, but just works where your eyes don't start jumping ahead automatically to see what happens next. (Because I actually had the same problems with Hitchhikers and Snow Crash -- loved them, and I think they're great works, but they're definitely page-turners.)

(Err, which is not to say that page-turners are bad. But they can be deadly for people, like myself, who get so into books that they're hard to put down.)

Joseph Campbell said that great art, novels included, comes from the same well as great myths and religions. The feeling of losing yourself in a novel can be addicting. I had to swear off novels for a few years when I noticed that I felt like crap whenever I was "out-of-book". I would read huge monster novels and live in them for months at a time while my life was falling apart. If you read to escape, then the novel is your friend, not the poem.

Too many people that aren't comfortable saying "Yeah... I don't like that" cause too many other people spent too much damn time telling them that there's right and wrong things in matters of taste.

I've had the opposite problem for the last few years, I just can't get through a novel (any novel) to save my life. I've always been a pretty slow reader but I'd stick it to the end, lately I can't seem to finish anything. I did manage to slog through the Baroque trilogy but it took me literally two years. Other than those, I've probably actually only finished 3 or 4 novels in this decade.

LOL. Åsk, your fiction reading routine is the most wonderfully quirky "addictive" behavior I've ever heard of. You are very, very cool, and stupendously, quirkily intelligent.

My vote is for "no intervention necessary" unless it really bugs you and you, personally and for your own reasons, would like to read more fiction, in which case you'd need to do some soul-searching and work on not getting so involved in novels that you can't just come and go as you please.

Well, aside from the problem of becoming too immersed, I think that with all the media that is available people have to make choices anyway; I don't think anybody can read all the books they want to read, spend as much time on various internet pursuits, watch the good television, listen to music, play the games, read the magazines, go to the cinema, watch the DVDs ... something's got to give.

I read all the time (mostly novels), but I rarely go to the cinema and don't even watch many DVDs. Why? Because to me those feel like big chunks of time to be sitting still doing nothing else, and I get a little antsy. It seems odd, because I will definitely read for that length of time and longer, but I can still pop some clothes in the washer, wash a few dishes while I fix a cup of tea, and I can read while waiting in line, on public transit, etc.

I rarely buy magazines anymore, because my online time sort of substitutes for that. I don't get involved in multi-user games and that sort of thing, because I suspect I would lose half my life. It seems to me that this is the sort of choice you are making, and whether we want to or not, we do have to choose, since we can't manage to pursue everything. If any of it begins to cause anxiety as the novel-reading tends to do for you, I figure it's probably a good one to let drop.

So the problem is that you like fiction stories too much? That you find it too absorbing?

Yep, if I get past the first page, it's like a trap door. I fall in and won't come out until I'm done. I draw maps in my mind of where it's set, I get really engaged with the characters so that I weeks later quote them with "so and so said that" as if they were real friends of mine and nearly nothing can snap me out of the spell. I was an avid reader when young, 13 books in a fortnight my mom keeps saying that I read and I remember that the local library ordered extra copies of this one book that I kept checking out (which was my first "teen" book even though I was only 9 years old). I'd hide in a closet and read, with snacks and hot cocoa until my mom dragged me out of there for dinner. Once I spilled a the whole thermos of hot cocoa on me when I was trying to refill my cup but not let the book go, and all that did was make me stop long enough to take my shirt off (I didn't stop reading).

So now that the Mr's family writes books, they keep talking about recent "must read" novels and find me quite weird since I say that I don't read fiction. I found as I got older there were books that really let me down at the end, and I would get really upset with bad endings to a book that had a good start which would leave me in a pissy mood for days. There are too many "Must read" novels out there and I don't have the time to walk through the time-warp trap door and vanish from my responsibilities like that any more!

Factual books are different, if they have difficult concepts, I must ponder them so I'll stop. Norse sagas have really complicated symbolic language that also make me stop to check what it means (not to mention really strange family trees and structures to keep track of over lifetimes so that'll keep you occupied as well). In both cases I can reference the concepts learned in these books weeks later without being the weirdo who talks about fictional characters as if they were real! Novels, well, some are great, some are funny but all of them are like little black holes that prevent me from going out and living the life the writers keep describing other people as having. ;)

...Oh yeah, but the real problem is that people keep giving me novels. ARRRGH!

Is that like giving an alcoholic a beer subscription?

I was like that as a kid, too, and can easily suck up a weekend with a long book. That said, I also have a lot of "brain candy" books that I'll read just to be reading, but they don't engage me enough that I can't put them down.

Maybe "exercise" with some of those, and move to bigger ones? Depends on if you're feeling deprived by not reading fiction. If not, let it be, and just stick to your guns and get people to take the pressure off. Then maybe the whole cake will deflate and it won't be an issue.