Anna Gooding-Calfrom BookRiot asks, should you stay up until 3:00 AM to finish that novel? Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!
PRO: You’ll get to finish your book.
At last, you’ll close your eyes with that sweet sense of accomplishment that can only come from closing a cover. There’s nothing quite like owning your Goodreads list in the wee hours of the morning!
CON: There’s another book in the series and it’s available on Amazon.
Oh shit. Oh shit. You HAD to update Goodreads, didn’t you? Now it’s become obvious that you have more reading to do. You’re still human! You still need to rest! Cut it off.
PRO: You’ll actually finish the book club book.
You can’t cut it off. You have book club tomorrow. Don’t be lame and half-read the book again. They’re catching on, my good friend! Power through, for Dog and country.
CON: You’re reading the wrong book.
Let’s be real here. You’re not actually reading Portnoy’s Complaint. You’re reading Gideon the Ninth! Meanwhile, Philip Roth languishes under a pile of tax paperwork on the other side of the room. You’re three pages in and you hate it and you’re not going to read it, deadline be damned.
PRO: Everyone else at work is reading this too, so they’ll understand.
It’s literally Harry Potter. It’s Fifty Shades Of Grey. Every time you face a colleague with sagging eyelids and a blank stare, you give each other a wavering smile. You’re all on this adventure together. Together, you will all stay up late to finish your book. Everyone understands.
CON: You still need to do your job, and you work with backhoes, so there’s that.
BAM! That was the sound of you plunging the toothy bucket of your eathmover right into a city water main. Was staying up late worth the $5.3 million your municipality is going to have to pay to fix this? If your answer is no, then it’s time to go to bed.