When do you give up reading a book?

I’ve seen lots of chat online recently about WHEN people give up on books they are not enjoying.

I’ve noticed lots of readers saying they give a book 50-100 pages. This is interesting to me, because as an author you have approximately 50 pages to ‘wow’ literary agents as a writer if you’re making novel submissions. So this means the average reader and literary agent submissions correlate.

But you get EVEN LESS than this as a screenwriter – just ten pages! In real terms, you may even get just one. This because there are SO many screenplay submissions, scripts have to start as they mean to go on and be as visual as possible. You get a little more leeway as an author.

But I give books much less chance … I read the first ten per cent only. If I don’t like it by then, it’s GONE!

But I absolutely hate giving up on books, just from sheer bloody-mindedness … It’s quite unusual for me to give up once I’ve got 50 pages or more in. This is because I can read a 300ish page book in about four hours, so if I’ve read 100 pages, that’s a third of the book … I can read there other two very quickly.

My own foible, though: if a book is on my TBR pile for a year or more? I may delete it from my Kindle or give it away if it’s a paperback. I work on the basis that if I’m really excited about the book, I would have read it by then!

What about you?