not reading the ending

I have a few friends who claim that they read the ending to a book first, just to make sure that everything turns out well, or to prepare themselves for anyone who is going to die. I never do this. A part of me feels like it is not fair, because the author has designed a book to be read in a particular way, with events happening in a particular order, in order to create a certain experience. Mixing it up is a refusal to give the author this authority, and it seems like it is your own fault if you end up not liking the book after that, not the author's.

But of course, this attitude is silly. Good books, like good movies and good TV, don't have to be watched in order. It may not make the same sense, but a well-written scene is riveting no matter what else you have seen or read leading up to it. But I have no intention of starting to read books ending first after this revelation. Why? I'm thinking about this.

I really like the beginnings of books. I like to read the setup. I like to have that "first" experience with the character and the world. Even books that are bad are often good enough in the first few chapters that they are worth reading. But I find that the middle of the book is very telling. When I start to want to turn pages faster just to get to the end, that is a sign that something is going very, very wrong for me as a reader. It means I have become impatient with the way that the author is laying things out, and that I don't trust that I will enjoy the gradual unfolding of things. It also means that I can predict the ending of the book fairly easily.

That is when I don't bother to read the end of the book. I close it and move on to another one. It means the book isn't worth me caring about the ending anymore.

If I don't finish a book, 99% of the time, it is a bad thing. But there is a small 1% of the time when I postpone reading the ending of a book, sometimes for days, simply because I don't want to turn the final page and be finished with it. I don't want the experience to end. I don't want to have to come out of the world of the book and take a breath in the real world and realize that now I have to find something else to do that is not as all-consuming as that book.

A few times a year, this happens and it feels like a drug. If I could sell it, I am pretty sure that I would be addicted to it. It would be dangerous because I would want to have it all the time. Maybe the truth is, it wouldn't work that way, because I have to be in a particular place for even the best book to work on me that way.

So what about you? How does your book-drug feel? And why might you not read the ending to a particular book?