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Do you give up on books more frequently than you once did?
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Yes, Patti, I'm the same. There just isn't time in my life for things I can live without.Sad really but it's the reality. Sounds almost cruel. And I feel bad about it.
I don't review things I've given up on.
I think it's a similar phenomena, I give up on books I pick up from bring and borrow stands in the church hall or in charity shops etc where they're only 50p
Yes, more so on kindle than paperback, I think partly due to them being free/cheap, and partly because I now have more 'favourite' authors, so less time
Yep, definitely. Reading, for me, is for enjoyment. If I'm not enjoying it, I stop. And it can take only four pages to reach that conclusion
My reading time is incredibly high-priced to me: it comes out of my tiny daily allotment of usable brain time, which I almost always reserve for writing.I don't get very far in, and lately, if there is backstory in the first chapter, before I care a hoot about the characters, that's the end of that experiment. I don't care about characters BECAUSE they had a terrible childhood (details provided for two pages by the author); I care about a character because of the kind of person he seems to be when I meet him.
That's such a good point, Alicia.There's does seem to be a trend in the books I'm choosing that the first chapter, or two even, is backstory or setting the setting or whatever.
One of the things I often think before clicking back to my homepage to look for a different book is 'Get to the frigging story already!'
That or 'Nope. Can't be doing with all these typos.'
I tend to give up on books when I either can't form a picture of what's happening (bad description) or when the reading is really too heavy going - either because the sentences are too long or the story doesn't seem to care if you're keeping up. Not much to do with whether it's on a kindle or hardcopy for me.Example of the first would be China Mieville - I think it was The Scar - I got about ten pages in but had no idea where the characters were or what they looked like. I felt like the story had moved on without me. Example of the second: Dune. That book felt like it didn't want me to know what was happening.
For me it started with my Eng Lit degree, more than 30 years ago. There were some books that I absolutely detested and really struggled to read.My tutor told me that there were some biggies that I had to read (Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens) but the rest was a matter of taste. Life is too short to drink bad wine or read books you're not enjoying.
This means that I have never read Ulysses or Pride and Prejudice or Lord of the Rings. I've tried all three on several occasions but can't get more than a few pages in.
I tried to read "Sense and sensibility" in the quiet periods of the election day. Couldn't get past the first few pages of stodgy infodumping. Gave up.
Patti (baconater) wrote: "That's such a good point, Alicia.There's does seem to be a trend in the books I'm choosing that the first chapter, or two even, is backstory or setting the setting or whatever.
One of the things..."
I call it 'just in time backstory' when it's done right. If it's important to the story, there will be a perfect place for it.
Absolutely know where you're coming from Will! I have no patience for the classis :/ - I'm also massive fantasy nut, I love my Dungeons & Dragons, Swords 'n Sorcery - but Lord of the Rings was such a grind I don't think I got halfway through Fellowship before I gave up. Not picked it up since age fourteen. Couldn't even get into The Hobbit....
I wonder if we're all just older as well and no longer that the patience for stuff we don't enjoy?
I've never been known to be patient. :)
T.A. wrote: "Absolutely know where you're coming from Will! I have no patience for the classis :/ - I'm also massive fantasy nut, I love my Dungeons & Dragons, Swords 'n Sorcery - but Lord of the Rings was such..."I couldn't get into Game of Thrones, at all. Really enjoying the TV show, though.
Patti (baconater) wrote: "I've never been known to be patient. :)"We noticed.
When you're young and there is nothing else to read and no one is forcing you, the classics are great.After that, when you pick your own, is when you start realizing what you will spend your money on - and personal taste is born.
The books I chose from the SF Book Club are still with me (unless the kids stole them).
I don't want to read GoT, but individual scenes are breathtaking - GRRM can write. I watched the first episode on TV - and decided it would consume my life, so it will have to wait.
Choices!
I certainly do give up on books these days. That's why my reviews are often four or five stars with the occasional three. I don't feel it's fair to review a book you haven't finished but I'm not going to flog my way through something I'm not enjoying. The potential one and two star reads get ditched early on.
TA, I know where you're coming from with China Mieville. His books are consistently 300-400 pages too long in my opinion. If he would just tighten the prose and get on with it, they'd be much more enjoyable. But he still doesn't come close to SK's The Stand, which I rate as the most mind-numbingly boring book ever written (and that was the "short" version!)Again I have little patience for high fantasy - all that intricate world building for chapter after chapter. Frankly I don't give a stuff about the Thraine of Arkledump's 500 year quest to bring harmony to the seven sons of starlight through the ancient ritual of mumbojumo that was handed down though seven generations of firstborn warrior elf halftoads that have been slowly dwindling until buggamir, who's now the last of his race and madly in love with a cloven tree imp, a doomed romance that can never be for reasons that might have been remembered six pages back if your brain wasn't crawling out of the highest window of the highest tower in the kingdom in a defiant refusal to just use the bloody stairs. Just shoot the bugger and move on. Next.
My mind boggles that anyone doesn't love The Stand. But you deserve many cookies after that second paragraph there, Tim. :D
Oh, I'm gonna steal it for my Facebook. It's just too good to not share.
I think there's a huge difference between reading your first fantasy series at 20 (Lord of the Rings in college), and the 200th fantasy series start.Tolkien was a master, an academician with true skills in linguistics and many other areas. Yes, the battle of Helm's Deep was too long (it was too long in the movie version, too) - and when I read the books again many years later, I didn't realize I was reading the same battle again.
But there are so many people writing these things now that I wouldn't even attempt to keep up. Maybe I've already given my heart away.
I thought the battle of Helm's Deep in the movie version was fascinating - and educational. So not too long for me.
Elizabeth wrote: "I thought the battle of Helm's Deep in the movie version was fascinating - and educational. So not too long for me."I think it's a matter of taste, I enjoyed it as well :-)
Were most of you avid readers as children. I was. When I was a kid it was the best indoor entertainment. Radio and TV( if you had it) was so limited for children's programmes. As an adult there are so many jobs and other things to do before you can relax with a book. I still feel a bit guilty as not being able to get into a book - I don't know why that is but that's how I am. It's a bit like having old clothes you'll never wear but again but can't throw away.
Is it that one of the problems today is that most of us have limited time to read and perhaps we tend to read in small spurts? When we do sit down with a book and we have only 20 minutes spare before we have to do something 'important', we might not get to the exciting bits. All we manage to read is the bit where the author is setting up the scene and the characters, so after 3 or 4 small spurts we still have not got to the action.Books/TV/films today seem to need a big splash in the opening minutes otherwise we've dropped the book/changed the channel/fallen asleep.
I'm afraid I am guilty of these small spurts. It can spoil the whole reading experience. Although, for me, I like a good set-up but it has to be good. The words need to bring forth pictures and a sense of 'being there'.
Just thinking out loud here!
Patti (baconater) wrote: "My mind boggles that anyone doesn't love The Stand. But you deserve many cookies after that second paragraph there, Tim. :D"
Agreed. I don't mind an author spending some pages to give me a back story with depth and context, as long as that back story actually helps the story. The Stand worked for me because all the different characters, particularly at the beginning, helped to show an entire country experiencing a disaster. That's interesting because we all experience events differently from each other, and we make different choices.
But I quickly get bored with too much info-dumping and backstory and too many characters. And yes I'd agree that much fantasy has a problem with this. I blame Tolkien for this. He brought his background as an historian to his writing, which means that his books are full of references to what happened before. Everybody is the heir of somebody else. Every relic used to belong to someone who owes a debt to someone else because his Daddy was friends with the other person's Daddy.
And this can be quite interesting for us readers. Tolkien is telling us a story set in the past, which references at least one even earlier past.
Tolkien more or less pulled it off. His imitators often don't. And I probably ought to include myself in that because I've written fantasy too. Of a sort.
I think you may have a good point there, Anna.I shall ponder that.
Yes, I was a very avid reader when I was a child, but we didn't have a lot of money, so most were either from car boot sales/second hand bookshop, or the library - our school library only allowed us to borrow two books at a time, and they were really thin, so I was there pretty much every day, and was known by name!! The main reading time I get now is sitting with the foster cats, other than that it is snippets here and there. I remember a few times spending all my Sunday reading an entire book and feeling guilty (although not this weekend)
Never feel guilty, Desley. Brazen it out!
Kath wrote: "Never feel guilty, Desley. Brazen it out!"I couldn't understand why I felt guilty. I do know the internet has reduced my reading, and having more TV channels, gone are the days where there is nothing on TV so I'd pick up a book, now it's scrolling through what I've taped instead.
Will wrote: "Tolkien more or less pulled it off. His imitators often don't. ..."The standard was set very high at the beginning. This is not often the case.
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I give up on books much more frequently than I did, pre-kindle.
Might be cuz I don't have as great a financial investment as downloads are usually very cheap or free.
Also, as they're usually cheap or free, I'm willing to try books I'd not even consider in the past.
What's your experience?