The Next Best Book Club discussion

If you begin reading a book that isn't the greatest, do you suffer through it like a bad movie, or put it down before getting to the end? I'll give a book about 3 or 4 chapters and if it doesn't pick up (or if the characters are too confusing or too frustrating) I'll put it down.

Well to tell the truth I stay with it untill the end, because I want to see what people rave aboout the book that I didn't like. I give it a chance maybe I will change my mind while I read it.

I set it aside, then after a few books, I come back to it, and if I really can't stand it, then I will put it aside for a few years, unless it's something like a Danielle Steel (yuck), then I don't feel the need to return to it. If it's a clasic, then I feel obligated to finish it at some point in my life.

I give a book 50 pages to capture my attention. If I'm not interested after 50 pages I put it down. There are too many good books to read to be wasting my time with bad ones.

April, I agree about classics. They have a way of being undeniable, even if they don't appeal to the senses at first.

I'll walk out on a bad movie much more easily than I'll put aside a bad book. A bad movie is just a waste of time whereas a bad book can still teach me something.

I finish books that I start 99% of the time. I think there are probably only about 5 I put down and out of all the books I read, that is not too bad.

I've put down one book in the last 5 years or so. And it was one that was widely popular. The Pillars of the Earth

I gave that one 1/3 of the way through. Meanwhile, I read three or four others to avoid reading that one.

I try to finish every book I start. Luckily for me, it is an infrequent occurance that I really have to struggle to the end.

I suffer through most of the book I don't like that well, but that usually isn't a large number....however, there were four books that I couldn't finish no matter what....The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, The Widow of the South, and The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, What Came Before He Shot Her.

I'm very stubborn and have to finish. If it's truly terrible I'll end up skimming the last half though. I think I've only ever given up on 1 or 2 books, and that was more of a 'forgot to pick them up again' than a give up.
Maybe I should start giving in after a few chapters though, so many books to get through...

I find it very hard to put one down once I start it. I have suffered through some HORRIBLE ones....
Wuthering Heights, Dracula, Angle of Repose, Saturday (please dont shoot me)

I had to give up on Atlas Shrugged and Catch 22...
I just couldnt get into them at all. It was so painful....

I always think to myself, maybe it will get better. It HAS to get better... most of the time it doesnt, but I always hope.

Rita wrote: "I've put down one book in the last 5 years or so. And it was one that was widely popular. The Pillars of the Earth

I gave that one 1/3 of the way through. Meanwhile, I read three or four others to..."

That's so funny, Rita! Pillars of the Earth is one of the few books I just couldn't finish!! It actually made me angry while reading it! :) I thought I was the only person who didn't like it!

I very seldom don't finish a book. Sometimes I will continue to read a really horrible book out of sheer disbelief that something so awful actually got published.

Rita and Jessica, I was able to finish The Pillars of the Earth, but the sequel, World Without End, was so exactly like the first book that I just didn't bother completing it.

House of Leaves and Fluke were the only two that I couldnt bring myself to finish, I skimmed fast through H.O.L but just couldnt bear to finish Fluke which was a first since I love Christopher Moore's writing.

I used to be fastidious about finishing every book I start, but in the last couple of years I've given myself permission to stop if it's just not for me. Usually I can tell if it was just the wrong book at the wrong time, or if I just really didn't like it.

The only time I force myself to read the whole book is when I'm reading it for book club or for review.

I rarely fail to finish a book. One I could not bring myself to finish was Give Your Heart to the Hawks.

Jessica wrote: "Rita wrote: "I've put down one book in the last 5 years or so. And it was one that was widely popular. The Pillars of the Earth

I gave that one 1/3 of the way through. Meanwhile, I read three or..."

Jessica, whew! I'm glad to hear that. I got 1/3 of the way through because I kept thinking, there must be something to it if so many people liked it.

I've got some other Follet books so I'm testing whether it's the author or just the book. For me anyway.

Mary, I didn't even know there was a sequel.

I used to finish every book I started, but like some of you I decided I had too many books to read to keep with something I didn't really like, so there have been a few recently I didn't finish - Atonement, A River Never Ends. I don't think these are terrible books, I think I just wasn't in the right frame of mind to read them at the time, so I'm hanging on to them.

I read until my eyes bleed and then continue until the end. I'm a masochist but I always keep hoping it gets better, that something might come along that might make the book seem not so bad.

If I really don't like how it's going, I usually quit reading it. I don't have assigned reading anymore!

Life is too short to read books you're A) not enjoying or B) not learning something useful from.

i'm reading 3 books at the same time and really don't really like any of them. i know that i will finish at least 2 of them because they came with strong recommendations. the 3rd one i'm not sure about. if anyone has read "dead until dark" by charliane harris please tell me it gets better because so far it's crappy. typical vampire sterotype!

The Almost Moon I absolutely could not finish this book which was sad because I really liked her other two.

Angela wrote: "I finish books that I start 99% of the time. I think there are probably only about 5 I put down and out of all the books I read, that is not too bad. "

I'm pretty much the same. I have a problem putting a book down once I've started, even if it's bad.

I nearly alway finish a book I start. I'm more likely to quit if it's from the library though, since I didn't pay money for it. As has already been mentioned, I just keep hoping that it will get better. When there are 100 pages left and it's still not better, I think, well it's only 100 more pages, so I might as well finish it.

I don't have a rule about how many pages or chapters if it's seems not to grab my attention i'll quit.Some books i know right away some I have read till the middle or almost the end and just be like it stinks time to move on.Sometimes i'll try again in a few months others i know i will never pick up again.

I have to admit that I didn't *technically* finish House of Leaves--I gave up when I got to the letters from Johnny Truant's mother. As far as I was concerned the story finished with the end of the Navidson Record bit---I didn't really care about Johnny's crazy mom.

Now I am waiting for someone to tell me that was the best part of the book.

I tend to finish the book, but i do end up skipping some paragraphs, which im sure doesnt help with the confusion of the plot.

When I was in High School and the first few years of college I was really into reading classics. I was trying really hard to be an intellectual and it dawned on my one day that I wasn't enjoying about 90% of what I was reading and reading had turned into homework. Enter Sci-fi/Fantasy...I've never looked back and I don't have a problem stopping books half way through if I don't enjoy it. There are far to many great books out there I haven't read to waste time with books I don't want to be reading.

And for you classic lovers...I do still read them but sparingly. :)

Stephanie wrote: i'm reading 3 books at the same time and really don't really like any of them. i know that i will finish at least 2 of them because they came with strong recommendations. the 3rd one i'm not sure about. if anyone has read "dead until dark" by charliane harris please tell me it gets better because so far it's crappy. typical vampire sterotype!

it does get better! the whole series is great; there's a lot of great humor and the tv show is good too!

I just finished reading The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell. I really liked it until the end... I don't even know what happened!! I read the last 2 pages a million times trying to find what I missed so that it would make sense! Frustrating!!

The two that come to mind are Inkheart and The Thirteenth Tale. I gave up on Inkheart, but kept at The Thirteenth Tale because of all the praise it was getting.

House of Leaves: I don't think it was that I didn't like it, I enjoyed a great deal of it, but I remember finishing it and having no idea what had happened.

I'll stop reading a book if it doesn't grab me in the beginning or first few chapters. I always seems to have alot of books waiting to be read and it's too easy to reach for another one.

I've just given up on a Sci-Fi book that wasn't thrilling me. I probably could have finished it and even enjoyed it, but I have far too many other things calling to me, Sirens from my island TBR, that it doesn't seem worth it to carry on with something that is not thrilling me.

Jo wrote: "Would you ever go back to a book you didnt finish? Ive kept the ones i didnt finish but i dont think i will go back and read then again "

I've read a few books that I had to start and re-start several times over the course of months or years before I finished them. Most notable among those were Don Quixote and Gravity's Rainbow. The one start/re-start book I haven't read completely yet is The Cider House Rules...but it's still on my To Read list.

I've done the pick up and start again thing after several years, most notably with Dickens - I was probably too young for it the first time.

The crapola, however, goes straight to the used book store or to Literacy for their book sale.

Jo wrote: "Would you ever go back to a book you didnt finish? Ive kept the ones i didnt finish but i dont think i will go back and read then again "

I often do... a placement on my life-is-too-short-and-TBR-is-too-long shelf means that the book just wasn't right for me at the time I picked it up and I may try again at a later date. Otherwise it goes into the sub-category of tripe...

I try to stick with it until the end at least. Sometimes books pick up. If I'm at least a hundred or so pages in and the whole thing has me going "Ugh!" every two sentences then I'll quit. I've found as I get a little older that I have less patience with bad books.

I never finish a book I hate. I give a book to page 30 and it may get to page 50. If I don't like it by then I toss it.

I usually try to finish a book even if I don't like it. This is the case for books that I read on my own time. Books for school however are a different story(no pun intended =]). I hate reading a scheduled amount of pages a day and often end up unhappy reading a book that I would otherwise enjoy. There have been plenty of books for school that I haven't finished.

Well don't leave us hanging...

What was it?

Thanks Ronna... I generally don't like werewolves and vampires, but the blurb is good for a few points!!

I used to be really anal about finishing every book I read. Then I read Nancy Pearl's "Book Lust" and her Rule of 50:

"Believe me, nobody is going to get any points in heaven by slogging their way through a book they aren't enjoying but think they ought to read. I live by what I call 'the rule of fifty,' which acknowledges that time is short and the world of books is immense. If you're fifty years old or younger, give every book about fifty pages before you decide to commit yourself to reading it, or give it up. If you're over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100. The result is the number of pages you should read before deciding."

Aaaahhh... permission to quit torturing myself with terrible books.

SO MANY BOOKS... SO LITTLE TIME!

Even though I never read Nancy Pearl's book, I generally follow the 50 page rule. But really it just depends on the book. Some books get only 10 pages (they're really that uninteresting to me), but 50 pages to capture my interest is the absolute max.

Like others have said, life's too short for blah books. Especially when the really good ones are waiting.

I rarely finish books I don't like. THere is so much I want to read, I have no problem walking away from a book. I will push through if it is for my book club, the discussions are really good when some people hate the book and some love it. I just recently read the Shack and didn't enjoy it, in fact it pissed me off a bit. It just came so highly reccomended, that I kept thinking it would get better. When I was done, I could not believe I read the whole thing.

I always finish books, where I live the nearest used book store is over a hour away, and the library is about a 45 minute drive and it usually does not have good books. There is a Borders and a Barnes and Noble on the same street so I am forced to go to either of those and buy all my books full price, so I feel guily after I have payed so much for a book not to finish it, I rarely dislike books anyway, I'm good at picking out things I'll like

Tina wrote: "I give a book 50 pages to capture my attention. If I'm not interested after 50 pages I put it down. There are too many good books to read to be wasting my time with bad ones."

But there are so many books that I was not enjoying at page 50 that really came around. The most recent for me was Elegance of the Hedgehog. At page 50 I was thinking - weird book, not really my style, what is the hype. But at the end I thought - this was not my favorite however I did enjoy, am glad that I read it and learned interesting tidbits about French culture that I did not previously know. So if I had let it go at page 50 I would have missed a good read.

I usually finish most books that I start, however, at times I regret it. I'm really not a fan of long books (over 350 pgs) as I tend to get bored and antsy (unless it is REALLY good).

I just finished reading "The Shadow of the Wind" and I just did not enjoy it. I finished it, but boy was I tempted multiple times to just give up! I'm not overly glad that I bothered finishing!

Couldn't finish Poisonwood Bible after three attempts, Mistress in the Art of Death, and Eat, Pray, Love. I'm probably the only one out there with these books on my list of least favorites.

I can understand Eat, Pray, Love. I did finish and found it entertaining but still can see how it would be easy to want out of that one and I do not know Mistress in the Art of Death. BUT I loved Poisonwood Bible. Did you give it enough time?