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Is it wrong to not finish a book
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Jason
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Jun 13, 2020 08:23AM
In the last few months I have ditched at least two books..... I tried to read them I felt awful like it was a betrayal but with these books I just couldn't carry on. Was it wrong to not finishing the books.
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Not at all. I have nearly 20,000 Kindle books in the Amazon cloud. If I'm not enjoying a book, I file it on my "did not finish" shelf and go on to the next book. Why should I waste time on a book I'm not enjoying?
I don't give the book a rating, UNLESS I'm not enjoying it because it's badly written. Lots of misspelled words, bad grammar, constant misuse of apostrophes, frequent homophones, etc.
My criteria is fairly simple. I do a lot of my reading during commercial breaks, or breaks between tasks. If I'm not anxious to pick up the book at the next break, it's got one or two more chances to not go to the DNF shelf.
For the few authors I love and give their books 5-star ratings, I'm usually in love with the book after about 5 minutes of reading. I don't want to put the books down. Those are the ones I end up reading until 2 or 3 am in the morning, and I'm sad they're done. :(
One advantage of the Kindle device is I can track my progress with the "percentage done" indicator. If I'm [sad that it's] progressing fast, it's a good book. If it can't progress fast enough for me, it's usually a bad book.
On a related issue, I wish I had stopped eating my dinner last night, and thrown it in the garbage. It wasn't worth my time or the calories I spent on it.
Mod
When do people realise that the book is not going anywhere or doing it for them, do you have certain rules or criterias like Randy has.
I recently gave up on a book I read 1/2 way. Onto the next.
I used to read books all the way through no matter how bad they were. Now I can give up on a novel five pages in without a problem.
It's not wrong to not finish a book. Sometimes it's not the right time, sometimes it's just not the book for you. It's ok to DNF.I usually try to push through a book until it feels like a chore. If it feels like a chore to read it's time to GO, generally.
Life is short. Many books are not. If you aren't enjoying a book & have given it at least a few chapters to prove itself to you, I see no problem with putting it aside. It may not be a the book for you, or this may not be the right time in your life for this particular book.
I had one book I was enjoying. About 70% of the way into the book, it changed genres on me. I put down the book, kind of angry. I didn't pick it up again for a few days. But it's now one of my favorite series.The genre-switch was just a "WTF!" moment for me. I didn't know what to make of it. Once I wrapped my mind about what had changed, it was actually kind of neat how it all worked together. Certainly planned that way by the author.
But it almost went onto my DNF shelf...
(view spoiler)
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WendyB that sounds like an interesting technique.
I was discussing this subject with my teenage daughter, she said if it's not for work, research or study/revision and supposed to be for enjoyment and its starting to be a chore then why not ditch it.
Mod
No set rules or criteria. When it gets to a point the I realize I'm struggling to find motivation to continue reading I drop it. I've done this three chapters in, close to mid-way through and even, like 70% or more. Although if I've gotten past 65-70% I'll often just skim read to see how it turns out, unless I've decided I just don't care at that point.
WendyB wrote: "If I'm struggling to keep reading I'll do what to many is unthinkable, I'll look at the ending. If the ending seems interesting I'll go back and continue reading to see how the story got there. If ..."
I sometimes skip to the end when I'm about to give up. Usually I find it wouldn't have been worth keeping going.
No, I think if you aren't into a book you are currently reading then why struggle to stay with it? I haven't been ditching as many books as I use to but if I still find a book marginally interesting then I will usually skim read to the end and it's usually 50/50 on whether it was worth doing that or not.
Oddly enough, I just added two books to my DNF shelf over the weekend. One because it was just keeping my interest. The other because of writing issues. At least one more round of proofreading and editing was definitely required.
I have quite a few DNF's and have made a shelf for them here. If I am not enjoying a book and it hasn't grabbed me then why force myself to read it. I usually know if I will enjoy a book by how soon it grabs me. Sometimes though if it is a series of books then I anticipate a little world building and just stick it out, but if it is a novel and I am struggling getting through it, that book will become a DNF and it will not get a star rating. I do not stars books I do not finish.
If you're reading a book and you pick it up and you're like, 'Humph, I got to plough on with this' then don't. You've only got one life.
