Non Fiction Books: When Do They End?

I’m sure you’ve all looked at a non-fiction read before and thought, “Wow, that’s a long book!” just to discover the last 50-100 pages are notes and afterwards and epilogues and misplaced introductions. I know I have multiple times and it makes the books seem much more manageable. But I’m starting to question how much I ‘need’ to read this.

This is stemming from my current read of The Feminine Mystique. I’ve come to the ‘end’ of the book or something like an end. I still have 100 pages of ‘other’ stuff. Some of it I want to read, some of it I don’t. But it got me thinking about how much of these ‘after’ things people read. Eiplogues I almost always read. But the acknowledgements? The afterward? The introduction to the reprinted edition? The notes? I think there’s somewhere to draw a line.

Reader, I’d love to hear your thoughts. How much of the print after a book ends do you read? Do you consider a book ‘read’ without going through all of these? Most importantly, can I finally leave The Feminine Mystique behind?

Until next time, write on.

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