Skipping pages

It’s hard to find an appropriate book these days, especially as a Christian that wants to read good, clean books. The unfortunate part is that so many of the new popular books do have many inappropriate scenes.

A lot of times the solution is skipping the pages that contains all the inappropriate scenes. Is that good enough? I think it is a gray area, but I want to discuss some of the pros and cons and my personal take on the issue.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

It enables the reader to read the popular books
You can screen books for others (such as a parent for a child)
You don’t have to do as extensive research about a book before reading it

Cons:

Others might assume that you read the inappropriate parts in the book
It is tempting for the reader to still read the inappropriate parts
Some of the important plot points in the book might be contained in an inappropriate scene

My Take

I have gone back and forth on whether skipping pages is the way to go. On one end, if I skip pages I can read popular books and do not have to do as much research about them, but the downside is that I can’t recommend the books without telling someone that I skipped pages in it.

There was a book series that I recently contemplated reading. I knew there were inappropriate scenes in the book, but I told myself that I would skip the scenes. But as I kept thinking about it, I knew that the inappropriate parts were what the book was known for mostly, and I realized that I would be taking it too far to skip that many scenes.

My stance depends on how much I have to skip in a book. For example, I read The Four Winds which had a few paragraphs in the entire book that I had to skip. However, there are other books that entire chapters had to be skipped (I’m looking at Colleen Hoover). Plus, the ones that are heavy with inappropriate content usually depend on that content for the plot. If I’m not sure if the book is clean, I will borrow it from the library instead of buying it in case I need to stop reading it. I do not want to relive the times where I have had to throw books that I have read in the garbage in the middle of reading them. I also tell people that I had to skip pages if I recommend a book.

For others, I would suggest evaluating yourself if you can skip inappropriate scenes and where your line is. I know my line is anything beyond kissing (only pecks) needs to be skipped. I also know that having a book with inappropriate content could be tempting for those without great self-control, and that’s something I consider as well. If I do not feel that I can skip the content in a book then I will not read the book.

I will say that for children, I would not trust them to skip pages. When I was younger, I did not let myself read anything that needed to have pages skipped because I did not trust myself to do that. I even stopped reading books that most others would believe were completely appropriate. If I were a parent, I would not give my child a book that needed to have pages skipped. That is why I suggest a parent screening a book that might be suspect before letting their child read it.