By Abe Villarreal
I own a lot of half-read books. Sometimes I feel guilty about this, especially when I'm at a bookstore in an airport or standing and staring at titles in a supermarket book aisle. Still, I can't help but pick up the new book.
I always complain to myself that there are too many books I start and don't finish. There are more things in life that we start and not finish than there are things that we truly finish. It's not something we like to admit.
I began piano lessons. Never finished that. I didn't get too far from just beginning them. I stopped feeling guilty about this sometime ago when I realized that maybe we never finish learning, doing, almost everything.
Of all things I don't finish, or just get started, books feel like they should be finished. They have a beginning and end. A last page. A back cover. They are written to be read.
I wish I could show you a picture of my pile of half-read books. Long books and short ones. Old ones and new ones. Books about history and people. Religion and the lack of it. A lot of it them are education related. How we need it and how we can get better at it.
Some books I have read through and through. The ones that had me hooked from the title page. The ones that I couldn't put down until there was not a word left to be read. I like those books, but I like the half-read ones too.
I like to pick up a book and try to remember where I left off. I like to reread the parts I already read, like rewinding a VHS and starting somewhere in the first half. Most of my books have those triangle folds at the top of their pages.
One of my books is about reading strategies for students. I know I should read that one too. Maybe it will help, but I'm sure I won't make it all the way through.
I can only wonder if the second half of a book is as interesting as the first half. I may never know. I keep buying books. Maybe there are more opportunities in life to begin something than there are to end them.
Starting something is always exciting. There is curiosity and wonder. I once read a book about a young black girl in the South during the Jim Crow era. It was written in the 1960s and it only cost me 50 cents from the local used bookstore.
I'm not sure why it caught my attention. Why I picked it up. I read the whole thing. The pages were yellow and they had that old book smell. Someone had written notes in it and I knew it meant something to someone before it meant something to me.
It was one of the books I read from beginning to end because it taught me something about our world. About how we treat each other and how we make advances, even when we take steps back.
I think I'm going to go through my big, unorganized pile and find it. With all the half-read books in front of me, I like to go back to the ones I read and start again.
Either way. I'm reading, and learning, and starting something.
Abe Villarreal writes about the traditions, people, and culture of America. He can be reached at
