[TSS] On the Merits of Skimming

I am reading Middlemarch over the next couple of months with the fabulous Zibilee from Raging Bibliomania.  The book weighs in at over 1000 pages on my Kindle and while I have enjoyed the first 20 percent of the book immensely, I admit that I have done some skimming.

There are many books that I've skimmed through before, even many books that I ultimately really enjoy.  For example, I used to read a ton of epic fantasy, and I skimmed through every battle scene in those books.  I do the same in historical fiction, pretty much leaving all of those battle scenes unread.  In Middlemarch, Eliot spends a significant amount of time describing medical ailments and treatments (odd, I know), and I skim through those paragraphs, too.  For non-fiction, if the author spends a lot of time on a topic I don't find particularly interesting or relevant, I will skim that portion of the book.  If there is a scene that really disturbs me, I will skim that.

I don't know how many people skim in their reading.  I think there is a fine line between judicious skimming and just DNFing a book.  But I feel strongly that you can really, really enjoy a book as a whole while not loving each and every page of it.

I suppose there are two paths you can take here:  you can either not read books that have sections that really do not interest you, or you can read those books and just skim/skip the parts that you don't find relevant.  I prefer the latter method.  There are so many things that I've learned from books that I've read in this manner.  For example, I didn't like Isabella Bird much at all, but I was fascinated by her life in the Rocky Mountains and how independently she lived.  So whenever she got prosy or preachy or annoying, I just went down to the next paragraph, and then the next, until she got interesting again.  And I'm very happy to have read her memoirs, even if I didn't enjoy every single page of them.

This happens to me a lot with classics, too, particularly those written in the Victorian era.  Frankenstein, The House Behind the Cedars, Middlemarch, The Leavenworth Case- I skimmed some pages of all these books.  But I am so glad that I read all those books, even if I didn't read every single word.  I think the effect of knowing and understanding the whole is much more important to me than reading each and every line.

And so often, instead of just giving up on a book, I'll skim for a bit and see if it gets better for me.  And often, it does.  I'm not saying that my life changed forever for the better because I made it through to the end of The Leavenworth Case.  But my life hasn't changed forever for the worse, either, because I skipped most of the battle/rape/violence scenes in George R.R. Martin's novels.  I think what's important is that I did find lines to enjoy, lessons to ponder and themes to mull over and appreciate in many books that I would have otherwise given up on.  All because I allowed myself to just skip a few paragraphs or pages and then get back into the action.

What about you?  How often do you skim a book?