Stealing Is My Hobby

I was reading an article in the paper a while ago about books that people never get around to finishing reading. I haven't really thought about it that much, but I can't think of many books that I have started and then abandoned. The last book I read (The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion) was annoying but I kept going. The book I read before that (Freakonomics, by two people, one of whom might be called Steven) seemed kind of patronising but I kept going (although admittedly not through all the appended articles at the back). Maybe this says more about the sort of books I read than my fondness for endurance and masochism, but maybe not.

This post could now go one of two ways. My initial thinking was that it would turn into me waffling about how I generally don't abandon things half way through (which is why I had the same job for seven years, and also why I have two vaguely useless undergraduate degrees), but then I thought of several million examples of why that is wrong wroong rong, and they are all a bit depressing to reflect on, so I am not choosing that option.

Instead, this is turning into a post about my favoured method of reading. Or rather, my favoured method of choosing books to read. I like to steal them. Only from youth hostels, mind you, so it's probably not actually stealing, but it seems that little bit more exciting when you think about it that way.

Youth hostels, for those of you too old or with hygiene standards too high to know, tend to have bookshelves full of crappy books that other scummy backpackers have abandoned. Usually the selection is ridiculously small, and half comprised of things in pesky other languages that can conveniently be instantly dismissed. This is why youth hostel bookshelves are better than libraries - you have far less choice and so you are forced to read things that you perhaps wouldn't otherwise have chosen. Anyway, you choose the least offensive book you can find, you read it, you abandon it at some other youth hostel.

I started doing this in earnest in Norway, where the selection of Mills & Boone-style romance novels is remarkable. Never have I come across so many recently-bereaved widows who had married the lovely but unexciting best friend of the man they truly loved, nor so many lovingly detailed descriptions of lingerie in all my life. Sadly this isn't the case in Switzerland. Over the last few weeks I have visited about five hostels (this is part of the charm, too, wandering in and trying to look as though you are staying there and not like some scumbag who has only popped in to nick the best books then leave) and of the 5 or so books that I have taken, only one has been really good (A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, which was super). Sadly, though, it doesn't mean I haven't read them all. Which strikes me as a bit of a waste of time.

Maybe the answer is to save time by giving up on more things half wa ...