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When Do You Decide to Toss a Book Rather Than Finish It?
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If I dread the idea of picking it up again, I won't finish it. There are too many books out there to spend time on things that I don't like. It IS entertainment, after all, and if you're not entertained, why bother?But if something's just moving slowly, I'll usually plow ahead, because sometimes you reach that point where it all comes together and becomes worthwhile.
The discussion can be pretty interesting, especially when enough people read the books. For April, we read "Thirteen" by Richard Morgan and got him on to discuss it with us. It was a very lively discussion and I ended up changing my opinion of the book vastly because of the discussion with the author. Understanding the author's point of view made a huge difference in understanding that book.So, I stuck with reading the book and it took 150-200 pages for me to get into it. Then, it moves to part two with different characters and I'm back where I was before. I'm almost to the halfway point, so I'll stick it out. (It better not end in a cliffhanger.)
I used to feel obliged to finish all the books I started. Then I got older, had a baby, and realized life is short! So many books, too little time! I felt so liberated by putting a book down if I just wasn't into it. If I'm not excited about reading it, if it feels more like a chore, if I don't like any of the characters, I'll toss it aside. One exception is for book clubs. I hated everyone in Lolita, but finished it. I also almost put down The Road - so depressing it wasn't something I wanted to return to. But the writing was so luminous, I had to pick it up again and I'm glad I did. The Road was the only book I've ever done that with.There are many times when I pick up a book and can't get into it, but recognize it's just not the right time. Maybe I've just finished a hard read that was all engrossing, and need something a bit easier. Or I've read a phenomenal sci fi that put me completely into that universe - I know I can't just immediately enter a new one. Or my mood at the time doesn't fit. It's easy for me to tell when the time is wrong, and I'll come back to those later.
Sandi, do you mind me asking what book it is? I'm curious! I'd probably just end up skimming the rest.
Or reading the ending. I do that. It's a horrible habit!
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To me if the book doesn't catch me half way through toss it. There are too many books and too little time to try to read something you don't like. I agree with just reading the ending once you get to a point where you are just bored. Then at least you know what happens before you put the book away. Another thing I have done is put the book aside and try to read it at another time. For our group's June book I actually did that! I tried to read it in 2001 and just didn't like it, and then 2003 read it again and it was a great book! So that also helps, sometimes I think you might not be in the mood for that type of book. 
This is a great topic :) I just recently found 5 or so books that I had started and never finished. In every case, it had nothing to do with not liking the book, and everything to do with what was going on with me when I was starting to read them. Life just gets in the way sometimes.There is one book I do remember tossing aside b/c I wanted to jump inside the pages and strangle one of the main characters. The author was trying to get the reader to sympathize with a spoiled brat stereotype and that just didn't go over too well with me. I skipped and read a bit of the ending them moved to something new.
And, finally, I read a novel of women in Ohio. It was very long and much more of a character study than an action storyline. It took 600 pages to get into the book (lots of characters, etc) but with all its faults, I'm glad I read it.
If a book doesn't pull me in, I'll start skimming until something interesting happens or just set it aside for a while.
I have so little time for pleasure reading these days, unfortunately, that I'm extremely picky about what book(s) I take up. Because I'm so choosy, I seem to have had great luck over the last few years and have yet to NOT finish any book I've started. It may take me 6 months to finish just one, but I finish!
I will give most books 100 pages to interest me or take off (or about 10% overall). Of course, part of the problem is that sometimes I've come that far and I think...well, I've come this far, I'd better keep going. Then I have to finish reading just out of some insane sense of completion in me. (It's an illness, I know...)That said, the art of skimming sometimes comes in very handy with a book that is really not floating my boat but I'm just curious enough to know how it all plays out.
I usually give authors/books approximately 200 pages before I'll make that decision. And even then, if even a little something has grabbed my attention or made me curious I will continue to the end. But if by ~200 pages, nothing has gripped me I will put in down. This recently happened to me with Glen Hirschburg's The Snowmans Children.
I usually read 2-3 books at a time. If I finish two and the third hasn't been touched for a few weeks I know it's time to move on.However, if it's for a book club or group discussion I might push through. Maybe. I read for entertainment. If I'm not enjoying it, there are too many other books out there I would enjoy.
If a book hasn't grabbed me within 100 pages, I set it aside. That's often fewer with straight Fantasy books since I find there hasn't been a lot of original stuff out there in the past few years.There are too many books, too little time, and since I'm a very eclectic reader, I'm already behind the eight-ball.
That said, if a friend has recommended a book to me, I'll probably try to slug through it even if I don't really like it.
Life is too short to read a book you don't enjoy.That said, I did plow through all of Lucifer's Hammer, despite wanting to fling it against a wall. But that was for a discussion group I was part of and I felt like I'd not be able to participate if I'd not read the full novel.
In my youth I felt compelled to finish every book I started. I didn't want to be a 'quitter'. As such, I distinctly remember the very first book I 'quit' reading. Dear Mr. Henshaw by Bevelry Cleary. Yes, that was in elementary school. This book plagued me for years. Sometime in college I finally realized there are moments in our lives when 'quitting' is not only acceptable, but wise. Reading is something I do for pleasure and escape and stress relief. The moment a book becomes an obligation or a trial or mind-numbingly boring...I quit that book and don't look back.
I honestly can't remember the last time I put aside a fiction book because I found it tedious, infuriating, etc. I guess I'm good at picking things I know I'll finish. That's not the case for non-fiction books. I read as much non-fiction as fiction, and sometimes, books written by academics, though the subject matter is of great interest to me, are so dry, I just can't finish them. Such was the case with C.L.R. James' book 'The Black Jacobeans'. This book is widely considered the definitive work on the history of Haiti, widely praised, but OMG, it was SOOOOO boring!!!
Because I'm quite squeamish what to read, I usually don't set it aside till the end. I think that I couldn't read two books to the and, and there are a few, that I have to strugle a bit, ok, quite a lot actually.
Never. I am very OCD when it comes to reading a book. If I get bored with a book, I might read three or four books at a time and pick up the boring book every once in a while, but I have to finish it!The worst example was The Tommyknockers by Stephen King. It took 600 pages to get interesting, but I couldn't give up on it!
I have never read The Tommyknockers but I have heard other people say this about that book, that is why I haven't attempted it yet.
I currently feel like that with, "The Knight". I personally dislike the main character and hate how he tells his story.I've tried to drudge my way through the book, but its just really hard. I usually can get through a book in a week with my schedule, but I find I read a chapter and turn around to play a video game or troll the internet.
Why do I do it? Usually because I don't like what I'm reading.
I finished the book, but afterwards I wondered why King even wrote the thing in the first place, it seems like such a 'watered-down' idea. I was disappointed to find he made the aliens idiot savants.Clancy's Sum Of All Fears is the one that I stuck with to the end, grinding through 400 plus pages of mind-numbing detail on how to build an atomic bomb before getting to the last 200 pages of exciting action.
There are countless books I've started and put down that I fully intend to return to. Those are the books that I put down due to personal mood. Something just didn't fit where I was at the time and I put it down with the hope of getting back to it, and I see from this thread that others have done the same.There are two books I've read, however, that made me decide to never continue a book I was hating: Anna Karenina and A Tale of Two Cities. I finished both, but loathed every minute of them. But having finished and loathed those books I have since tossed others aside with no plans to pick them up again. The whole "life is too short" statement is cliche, but it is also true. There are too many books to read without trying to force myself through something that I know I can't stand any more.
The most recent I put down was The Last Reports of the Miracles at Little No Horse, by Louise Erdrich. I really loved Erdrich's writing, it's fluid and rich and poetic, but her characterizations were all in monochrome and I couldn't take it anymore. It was like every character saw the world around them in the same way, and it undermined the "truth" of the characters for me. I made it to just past half way and put it down. I'll never go back.
Most of the time I still find myself reading books all the way to the end even if they turn me off in someway.It has to be really not my cup of tea to stop me from finishing it. But when I do finish a book that just didnt work for me -- the tendency is to put that author in the do not read list more often. So its not that particular book that I dont finish -- its the next one that I dont start.
I'm another OCD member. I have to push through to the bitter end of each and every book otherwise all I can think about is that book I didn't finish. I'm actually struggling with one right now, but I'll get it done.
I do think that the younger you are the longer you should give a book -- if you are 55 or older I would not give a book more than 100 pages. If 45 to 54 I can see giving a book 150 pages to get going and if you are younger than that its your decision. I do agree with the life is too short crowd but still not ready to stop reading books in the middle b/c I have invested typically so much time picking the turgid book out, then reading it that I find it hard to give up on it
I never thought of it as being OCD, but I nearly always finish everything that I start. If I set something aside to begin reading a new purchase that seems more exciting, I will start from the beginning again if too much time has elapsed.I am even more motivated to finish everything since joining Goodreads, as I can now look forward to the prospect of moaning and groaning and being generally catty in the review (in a constructive sort of way, of course).
For me anyway, it becomes clear relatively quickly that some books are just anathema to me on some very basic level, and when that happens I jettison them with wild abandon.I found myself in that situation recently reading the first Black Company book. No offense to the author, but I found myself constantly saying "E-gads this reads like a sixth grader's attempt at a fantasy novel!" so after 200 or so pages of this I gave up, despite the incredibly enthusiastic recommendation from a friend whose opinion I generally respect.
Jeffrey: I guess I'm easy to please, or perhaps I'm better at picking books I'll like than most people are, but I can count the number of books I've put down and not finished on one hand--literally. Maybe 3 or 4. And that's out of thousands I've read over the past 40 years. Sure, I like some books less than others, but there have been very few that I disliked enough not to want to finish.Mark.
Mark, Most of the time I too finish the book, but I do read a lot of new authors as I get tired of the same old stuff so it becomes a little more chancy and when I am between my favs I sometimes read books recommended by others b/c they may be "literary sf" or literary fantasy -- its those books that tend to be my worst decision -- when i take a chance on something that I didnt pick first.
So, should I toss it? Or, should I just plug along and try to finish it for the discussion? For the record, there are seven books in the series and I know I don't want to get involved in a series that's so long. This one is 623 pages.