Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

Francis Bacon's essay Of Studies describes reading through a sequence of eating metaphors. Some books deserve a taste, some can be taken in more quickly, and a few require prolonged attention. The wider passage explains different levels of reading. The point is not simply to rank books by prestige, but to recognize that different purposes call for different ways of meeting a text. Read the source.

This is helpful when finishing becomes more important than understanding. Reading every page at the same speed can flatten an argument that needs rereading or prolong a task that only requires a particular fact. Bacon permits discrimination. A book can be sampled without dishonor, and a difficult paragraph can deserve more time than an entire easier chapter. The measure is what the reading is for, rather than how efficiently a growing stack can be converted into a list of completed titles.

The ginger cat sniffing an open book takes the metaphor just far enough for the joke. There is no actual literary diet on offer, and the pages remain intact. Humans have the advantage of more suitable equipment for interpreting them, although that equipment also wanders. The picture makes a useful reminder: approaching a book is only the beginning. Some encounters ask us to stay, return, and let the meaning take longer.