A sandwich for finishing the book

[jeff severs]

Paul writes:
>
>        I've got another question. What percentage of books published
>(printed) ever get read? Say, of those on the NY Times bestseller list? 
>Every once in a while I buy one and can never hardly get through
>a few chapters. In this respect, heavily-marketed books may be
>like exercise machines. This is no consolation to the trees, of course.

I remember a _Time_ magazine (speaking of unread publications) article from
1989 or '90 (I think) about a study some group conducted on unread
best-sellers. They put post cards in the back pages of _The Hunt for Red
October_ (I made it there, sadly), Stephen Hawking's big seller, and some
others, promising five bucks or something like that just for sending the
card back. Hardly scientific, sure, but the numbers were pretty staggering:
very few returns in the case of books _everybody_ knew and was talking
about. (I can try hunting down the article if any one's interested.) Any
speculation as to what such a study for _GR_ might turn up? Does everyone
out there have their 100-pages-in, their lost "in the zone", and their
finished friends? Or do my friends just suffer from acedia?