Reading Without Regret: The Reader Who Just Didn’t Care

Have you ever regretted reading a book — which one and why?

To be honest, I couldn’t say that I’ve ever regretted reading a book before. I’m sure there are books I read when I was younger that I dreaded because I was forced to read them, but there’s never been one that I personally chose to read where I genuinely regretted the time spent. There are certainly books I haven’t liked — The Natural, for instance.

However, I do recall being assigned a novel back in a college Literature 101 class — unfortunately, while I was already cutting it a bit close with some trouble in that course. I think it was either The Edible Woman or Surfacing by Margaret Atwood. As I said, this was a required read for the course, and I really could not get myself invested in the book. I understood the story. I understood the various plot threads. I could analyze the characters, their motivations, their story arcs, and so on. But for the life of me, I just didn’t care about the characters.

The best definition I ever heard for a protagonist in an English course was when an instructor defined them as “the character with whom the reader sympathizes.” Note that it’s not necessarily “the good guy.” In the case of this particular read, I could not for the life of me sympathize with the protagonist or any of the minor characters whatsoever. I couldn’t have cared less how the story was going to end. I didn’t want the protagonist to win, and I didn’t care if they lost. I was completely indifferent.

I think it’s OK to read a book and not like it. I tell my students this all the time. I tell them it’s OK to not like a book as long as you can give me a definitive reason why — other than dismissing it by saying “it’s dumb” or “the characters suck.” If a student is going to come at me complaining about a book, they better have some evidence to back it up.

I think it’s important here to keep in mind that Atwood is most famous for her work as a pioneer of feminist literature. I’m not saying this as some angry, middle-aged, misogynistic guy; I just genuinely didn’t care about any of the figures on the page. It wasn’t like I was actively cheering for the protagonist to come up short. As I mentioned, I couldn’t care less what happened to any of them, and I literally read the book just to get to the finish line.

If I recall correctly, I eventually raised my hand in class and just laid it out for the professor: I explained that I understood the plot, the motivations, and the mechanics of the story, but I simply didn’t care about or sympathize with anyone in it.

From what I can remember, the rest of the class stayed quiet—I think I might have surprised them a bit. But the professor seemed to take it entirely in stride. She was kind of on the young side herself—probably in her mid-20s with a fresh master’s degree, and this might have even been one of the first full-time courses she was teaching. She had a great energy about her, and her reaction was basically, “That’s OK that you didn’t like it, Rob.”

Looking back, I think that experience played a huge part in forging the kind of teacher I would eventually become. At that point, I had already been cast on my path and was planning to be an English teacher; in fact, I was taking that Lit 101 course simply because I needed one final literature credit. But that moment planted a seed. Today, I tell my high school students all the time: It’s OK if you don’t like this story. I just want you to understand it. Understand the plot, understand the character motivations, and bring an actual argument to the table instead of just griping. That’s what I was trying to do in that college lecture hall 30 years ago.

And remind me one day to tell you the story about how I managed to successfully analyze Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov without reading a single page of the book. That was also in this very same Literature 101 class.

Rebuilding a life takes grit, consistency, and a lot of ‘Option C’ thinking. Having crossed the 1,000-day milestone, I’m now charting the territory beyond. The mission remains the same: No glitz. Just the work. New to the blog? Start your journey here to see the blueprint and the ‘Tricorder’ perspective behind the rebuild.

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The article “Reading Without Regret: The Reader Who Just Didn’t Care” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob

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