ABSTRACT
The dirty secret of academia is that people are less well read than they pretend to be. Such is the outpouring of books and articles nowadays – to say nothing of social media and so on – it is almost impossible for any single scholar to keep abreast of their field. Reading the literature, in short, is subject to the law of diminishing returns. Doctoral students, in the author's experience, are especially susceptible to the completist mind-set. They feel they have to read everything that has ever been written on the subject of their thesis. That way madness lies, to say nothing of prevarication, procrastination and unnecessary delays in dissemination. Amusing though Pierre Bayard's analysis of avoidance undoubtedly is, it fails to accommodate affect. If, fragmentary facts aside, the only thing that remains from a reading is an overall feeling about the book or article's argument, then future research into not-reading should focus on experiential aspects of the practice.
