Ever frozen in indecision?

[Vance]

This happens to me regularly nowadays. I have very little time to read (and my listening is dominated with podcasts), so my reading time is very valuable and I am afraid of wasting it (it takes me at least a month to finish a book)! I have this long list of titles and know that I can never possibly read them all, so I must choose wisely. I read the reviews here and on Amazon, I ponder and dither and am afraid to commit!

Anyone else so indecisive when it comes to reading?

[Nick]

I have a strange compulsion to finish whatever I'm reading even if I don't care for the writing or the story so I can sympathize with your anxiety.

[Paul]

I go through phases like this, where I look at my groaning bookshelves and just can't make a decision. This year I've sorted out a dozen or so books I've owned for years but am yet to read, so that shelf is my first port of call.

[Jlawrence, S&L Moderator]

Well, I have so much on my to-read list that I don't have a problem picking up something new from that list. BUT...I'm sometimes very indecisive about whether to continue a book that I'm not really loving, because I feel like it's eating into the time I could spend on other books on that impossible to complete to-read shelf.

I've gotten better at simply putting a book down, but some I feel obligated to finish - I'm experiencing that with The Name of the Rose right now. I've looked forward to reading it for many years, and all its ingredients suggest I'd love it, but....I'm just finding it mildly interesting at 50% through. But I feel compelled to not abandon it...

[Warren]

and the patient is already anestasized.
Geez. I know what you mean.
I hate when that happens.

[Robert]

Read multiple books. Problem solved!

[Vance]

Robert wrote: "Read multiple books. Problem solved!"

That is what I end up doing a lot, but then it takes even longer and I often don't finish books. I do better with audiobooks, though, when I am not swamped by podcasts.

[Warren]

On a more serious note. I have the same problem.
I've begun dumping books after a few chapter.
Which is hard to do. I generally want to finish what I start.
I finally decided that there are too many good ones
already in my cue to waste time
ploughing through the other.

[terpkristin]

Yeah, it happens to me, especially if I know there is another book club pick coming soon. I've been trying to pick up some shorter selections from Audible so that I have something quick to get through in times like this, as opposed to the 500-1000+ page books I typically do...

[Warren]

Kindle singles are idea for that sort of thing.
Or some of the sample in Light speed magazine.
One of the reasons I think authors would do will to offer sample chapters

[Tora]

Jlawrence wrote: "I've gotten better at simply putting a book down, but some I feel obligated to finish - I'm experiencing that with The Name of the Rose right now. I've looked forward to reading it for many years, and all its ingredients suggest I'd love it, but....I'm just finding it mildly interesting at 50% through. But I feel compelled to not abandon it... "

I LOVED Foucault's Pendulum, but The Name of the Rose was the same way for me--I finally had to finish it by forcing myself to read 10 pages a day no matter what. I kept going because it felt like there was such potential there, but it just never clicked for me.

I don't really have this dilemma over books, I just pick whatever I'm in the mood for, and since I'm usually reading several at once, I have one for any mood. I do have this dilemma sometimes in deciding what to do with my time, though. Play that awesome computer game? Watch the drama I'm enjoying that's helping me learn a foreign language? Listen to an audiobook while I knit or crochet? Read a book? Sometimes the choice is obvious, but other times I wind up dithering for a ridiculously long time over which one to commit to for the evening.

[terpkristin]

Tora wrote: "I don't really have this dilemma over books, I just pick whatever I'm in the mood for, and since I'm usually reading several at once, I have one for any mood."

This actually gets to be my issue...figuring out what I'm in the mood for. It gets worse if I'm hungry...I can't make (otherwise trivial) decisions when I'm hungry.

[Vance]

My "mood" selection tends to be between fiction or non-fiction (which I read in equal parts), and occasionally I will have a SF/Fantasy novel and an action/espionage novel going at the same time. But if I get too many going, I end up just stalling on all of them.

I wish I had a "pause" button for time, I would use it purely for reading, I think.

[Kris]

I just go with the flow and usually I find I have bursts when I read alot on a regular basis then stretches that are pretty fallow...no reason to it just seems to happen.

[Micah]

terpkristin wrote: "This actually gets to be my issue...figuring out what I'm in the mood for. It gets worse if I'm hungry...I can't make (otherwise trivial) decisions when I'm hungry."

Same happens here. If the stomach is growling all decisions get put off until it is satiated. Then & only then can the decision making proceed. But if what I am hungry for is not in the fridge it can turn into a very very long night.

[Ben]

No, but I've been frozen in carbonite.

Drumroll?

[sad trombone]

Dang it.

[Stan]

If you have little time then read collections of short stories.

You can finish a story, but still have more of the book to read

[Vance]

Stan wrote: "If you have little time then read collections of short stories."

That is good advice, I do have a couple of collections of short stories (mostly genre mystery) when I need a quick read and am having "commitment" issues. :0)

[Joseph]

I have kind of the opposite issue -- as soon as I finish one book, I have to at least read the first few pages or the first chapter of the next book. If I'm reading a series, that's not a problem because I know what to start next. But other times I'll finish a book and spend the next half hour or hour wandering around and staring at my shelves (or paging through my Kindle) waiting for the spark to strike.

tl/dr: I can't not have a book in progress.

[Esther]

I'm a chain reader, I have to pick another book within hours of finishing. I've created a read-next shelf and just blindly grab off that.
It's like the rule about not going grocery shopping when you're hungry. Sometimes I panic at the thought of all the great books on my shelves but I choose the next book/books to read while I'm still in the middle of the previous one and then my choice is less frantic.

[Noomninam]

I'm finding that mixing media somehow segments my day so that I can read as many as three books at a time: 1) A bound paper book that doesn't leave the house; 2) A Kindle eBook that I read on the bus or subway while commuting; and 3) An audiobook that I listen to while at the gym, on the bicycle, and sometimes late at night when the boss is asleep. This split attention entails some loss of continuity/detail, but that happens anyway a week or two after I finish a book. Often one of them is non-fiction, which seems to help with not letting the streams cross. Alternately, I will listen to a book while in transit, and pick up the bound paper version at home, as a way of getting through one book faster. Doing that w/ Locke Lamora now.