
hard disagree. books belong to their readers, you can engage with as much or as little of it as you want. I read fiction in my downtime but I mostly read non fiction research and anyone can tell you there’s sort of a specific order: title, abstract, conclusion, discussion / methods, and then maybe the actual bulk of the paper if you want to chase citations. Different communities have different standards on what counts as having “read” something.
it’s fine that this is how you want to define having read something, but that’s just not a community to which I belong. most years I read dracula as it unfolds (the book takes place from may 3rd to november 7th), there are some passages i always skip over or skim. I think i have read the book. Same with tolkien, there’s some long descriptions i will sometimes just skip entirely (this is due to him rewriting the book so many times there’s a fun history there)