What are some of the most frequent questions to ask friend for the position (either general like chapter number or specific like page number) in a book that they have finished reading yesterday? I suppose one of them is "where were you left with yesterday?".
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1I assume the reason friend is asking is because he knows the book very well himself, and he wants to talk about it with you even though he knows you haven't finished reading it yourself. So he might well use the abbreviated loctative ("position-based") metaphoric usage "Where are you up to?" because we tend to think of narratives as consisting of a series of "points" on a "line" from "start" to "end", same as real-world physical journeys.– FumbleFingersCommented Nov 18, 2023 at 15:13
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2"Where were you left with?" is not a valid sentence.– Kate BuntingCommented Nov 18, 2023 at 15:35
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@KateBunting how about "Where have I left yesterday?"– Tran KhanhCommented Nov 18, 2023 at 16:55
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1No. You could say "Where did I leave off yesterday?" (Leave off is a less common way to say stop [doing something].)– Kate BuntingCommented Nov 18, 2023 at 17:03
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@KateBunting, that's a thought!– Tran KhanhCommented Nov 19, 2023 at 3:47
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2 Answers
You might ask "Where did you read up to?" or "Where did you get up to?" or "How far did you get?". Conversationally it is common to use yes/no questions: "Did you finish chapter 10?", "Did you get to the part with the monster?" with the expectation that your friend would say something like "Yes, and I finished chapter 11 too." You can ask related questions: "How much of the book do you have left?" and so on.
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If I ask myself for a specific page number that I stopped at yesterday, then should any of "which page did I stop at yesterday?", "which page have I finished reading yesterday?" or "which page am I currently on?" be suitable? Commented Nov 18, 2023 at 15:12
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To use your verb leave (past tense left) you could ask:
Where did you leave off?
It could be paraphrased as "At which point in the story did you stop reading?" or "How far did you get?"
The typical answer to that question won't be a page or chapter number but a description of an event in the story's plot, such as "The spaceship has just landed on Mars" or "They've reached Rivendell" or "The heroine has just been hired by a prominent law firm." if the book is fiction, or "I just finished the chapter on ATP" if it's a science textbook.
