Reading from Cover to Cover

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Arthur Waley (1889-1966), Yuan Mei: Eighteenth Century Chinese Poet (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1956), p. 142:

There is also a warning against reading a passage here and there in books, instead of reading from cover to cover. Apropos of this last injunction, I remember that my father's old governess, Miss Keeling, thought it wicked not to finish a book she had begun, and consequently felt obliged, if she picked up by mistake some desperately technical work on economics that my father had left lying about, to read it through to the bitter end.