All About Books discussion

Here are three recent articles; one insisting you should never give up once you start reading a book, one arguing you definitely should give up if you are not getting on with a book, and one debating the issue.

Having given up on G (John Berger), Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie), Schindler's List (Thomas Keneally)and The Lives of Others (Neel Mukherjee) this year, I am in the cut-your-losses-and-move-on camp.

How long does it take you to decide to stop reading a book you aren't enjoying? Or do you soldier on 'til the bitter end?

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainm...

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/bo...

I used to be a fanatic; every book I started had to be completed. Well, I'm older now, and my perspective has changed. I generally give a book about 100 pages to draw me in. If it's not working by then, I cut my losses. I'm finding that I really want to organize my reading, because I'm not going to be able to read everything I want before I die. I read a lot of current fiction, but I like to mix in classics and rereads of books that have meant a lot to me at another stage of life. I'm finding it quite interesting to reread some of my favorite books (The Great Gatsby is a recent example). I'm finding new meanings and perspectives in the books because of the stage of life I'm at right now. I've also accepted the fact that I'm a quirky reader and my tastes can run to the obscure. But I'm OK with that.

I think life is just too short to read bad books; if I'm not enjoying it I stop reading it. I usually give books a good chance, though. Like you said, Terri, I tend to give them around 70-100 pages as some books can start slow and then vastly improve.

I do not give up on books easily. I push myself to finish, BUT if I am 100% sure that the book cannot turn around for me, and if I am really hating the reading experience, I will dump it. I don't go by a page limit; it all depends upon the book. I don't think I would ever give up on a book until I have read a very large portion of it. I DO write reviews even of books ,not finished. I state how far I have read. If all of us who dump a book do not voice our opinion the rating of such books gets skewed.

I feel the same way as Terri. I used to read every page of every book I started but I've changed my perspective as well . I'm not as patient as Terri . If I think I'm not going to like a story after 50 pages or so , I have no problem with giving it up . There are just too many other things to read . Terri and I also share a favorite book , The Great Gatsby , which I reread from time to time .

I used persevere, but nowadays I give up on books I don't like. This might be after 10 pages, or after half the book, but normally, like Chrissie I push myself to keep going unless I really can't stand it. I am much more likely to keep reading a classic book, as these can be slow burning, whereas more modern fiction tends to set the tone within the early stages.

It is difficoult for me to drop a book; even if I don't like it I tend to read it to the end; sometimes I think I'm wasting my time...

Some books DO improve.

I am more willing to dump a fiction book that is really bad than a non-fiction book b/c the non-fiction will at least give me something even if I don't like the experience.

(Currently, I am NOT loving Bertie: A Life of Edward VII, but I cannot give up b/c I have to find out about the end of his life and more about Queen Victoria. I don't like it because it is SO gossipy! This is my mistake... given his personality; I should have guessed. Another book on Victoria made her look so different! I simply have to check out the rest.)

I generally read to spark my imagination, be entertained, to learn something or a combination of two or three of those. If a book is doing none of those, I don't see the point in continuing.

I think it depends on the book and why I am reading it. More often than not I do persevere. My tolerance for "bad" books is higher in audio format. I am currently listening to The Valcourt Heiress. It is definitely not a genre I usually read, but I picked it up because I choose books for my local book club, and the library has it as a bookclub in a bag kit and we read a romance once a year. I know that a lot of women really like Catherine Coulter and this book has its share of 4 and 5 star reviews. Personally, if I were reading this in print it would have been a wall-banger. I will finish it on audio, but I will NOT be selecting it for my book club!

I personally have a hard time with this. I usually start a book and then something triggers me to want to start another book and then another and so on and so forth. But I usually never end up finishing them and then I start them over somewhere down the line and sometimes I finish it the second time around and sometimes I don't. It usually takes me about 10 attempts at a book before I completely finish it :)

I'll definitely give up a book I'm not enjoying. But like Pink said, if the book is one of the "classics", I usually try to persevere just because I know the must be something special about the book that has deemed it a classic in the first place! Perfect example is Moby Dick.

I hate giving up on everything, even books I am not enjoying. But just like Pink and Sandra said, if I am reading a classic I try to insist till the end. Right now I am reading Moby Dick and I am so tempted to give up, but it's a masterpiece, so I will give it a chance!

But if I read half a book and it still doesn't make me want to pick it up and reading it, I learnt to give up. This was the fate of: Letters from a Stoic by Seneca (interesting, but heavy), Haunted (just no, not my style), Dreamcatcher (too bizarre for me), The Chronicles of Narnia (I just didn't like it), Confessioni by Sant'Agostino (boring).

In my opinion, life is too short to spend our free time reading something we don't like. We have to try, not judging a book only by ten or so pages, but if the story or the characters don't appeal us, then we shouldn't persist.

I do give up on some books, breaks my heart but just can't finish some.

I hate to not finish a book, but if it becomes a real slog and I'm counting the pages every five minutes, becoming distracted while reading and dreading to pick the book up, then I stop. There are too many fabulous, captivating, enveloping books to waste time on those you don't like...

It doesn't happen often, but this year I gave up on The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk and now I'm struggling through Los Enamoramientos by Javier Marias. I did manage to finish Fitgerald's The Beautiful and Dammed, even though I hated the characters and their pointless life.

Like others, when I was younger I used to feel I had to read every word. I even read all the philosophical digressions by authors like Victor Hugo that didn't add to the story. Now I'd be fine with skipping over parts. I often do that in nonfiction, read the parts that interest me and skim the rest.

In fiction, It's true that some books get better as you go along but some get worse. There are some books I'm sorry I spent the time on! However, I can see the point of not always jumping to immediate gratification. A book club is good for that. I feel more compelled to finish when it's for a club and sometimes the discussion helps me appreciate the book more. Book clubs also get you to read things you might never have read, in my case Moby Dick, which someone mentioned above. That's a book that starts out delightfully (who knew Melville had a sense of humor?) and ends thrillingly but bogs down in the middle. I admit I did not read every word about the whale's anatomy and techniques for processing it. I still gave the book 5 stars - after avoiding it for literally 50 years.

Johanna wrote: "I hate to not finish a book, but if it becomes a real slog and I'm counting the pages every five minutes, becoming distracted while reading and dreading to pick the book up, then I stop. There are ..."

Yeah, when you start counting pages you know something is wrong!

Pink wrote: "I used persevere, but nowadays I give up on books I don't like. This might be after 10 pages, or after half the book, but normally, like Chrissie I push myself to keep going unless I really can't s..."

I tend to persevere but there are some that I know within only a few pages that they are not going to be for me and I've become more open to giving up on books over the last couple of years. If the writer's style (usually overly-florid or packing obscure words into every sentence) makes me angry within the first chapter then that's usually a sign that I should stop reading. I'll sometimes flip through the book to see if that style continues before giving up though. I'm going through this with Mary Renault's The Nature of Alexander at the moment; her style is very disjointed, such that I need so much brain time to decode the wording that I don't have enough sense left to absorb the information she's writing about! It's sat on the shelf for a while and I'm probably going to give it back to charity and read Robin Lane Fox's book on Alexander instead, which hopefully will be easier to follow.

I do tend to stick with classics, though with Moby Dick I didn't come out of it with an appreciation for the work, more a loathing of it! I was glad that I actually stuck it through to the end, but I just think of it as a bloated mass of awfulness though! ;-)

Desirée wrote: "I hate giving up on everything, even books I am not enjoying. But just like Pink and Sandra said, if I am reading a classic I try to insist till the end. Right now I am reading Moby Dick and I am s..."

Don't give up Moby-Dick; or, The Whale Desirée! It is one of the most beautiful book ever writte! I do admit that it takes time to appreciate it, but when you've finished you'll miss it terribly!

I love how Moby Dick gets such diverse opinions, it's one that I have to read...one day!

Pink wrote: "I love how Moby Dick gets such diverse opinions, it's one that I have to read...one day!"

;)

Angela wrote: "I feel the same way as Terri. I used to read every page of every book I started but I've changed my perspective as well . I'm not as patient as Terri . If I think I'm not going to like a story afte..."

I, too re-read Gatsby every other year and I still consider
it as close to perfection as anything I've encountered in literature.

I try to not pick books/authors who are not to my taste (required school reading aside).

That being said I got stuck 40 something % through Don Quixote and quit (the read-a-long had basically died on DQ as well so nothing pushing me to get past 1 section), and a book I just 'finished' I ended up skimming half of it when the content wasn't what I wanted to read (too many descriptions of a crazy person's religious ramblings).

I did push through The Inferno by Dante and Frankenstein, although it took me quite awhile. I'd set a goal of a certain number of pages or % (on kindle) and then pick up something less tedious. Frankenstein got better once the view shifted to the monster's perspective and I would double my % goal.

Do I give up or completely abandon books altogether with no intention of ever picking them back up? Rarely. I used to never do that. I would finish every book no matter what. A couple of years ago I started abandoning books. Do I sometimes not finish books for other reasons? ALL THE TIME. This year that has got completely out of hand. I guess what bothers me about it the most is I feel like it's time spent that I can't account for.

In 2013 (my first full year at goodreads) it shows I read around 160 books start to finish, around 60,000 pages IIRC. This year so far I've read about 90 start to finish, a little over 30,000 pages. BUT, actually this year I've read just as much as I ever have in any year, if not more, it's just not reflected in my stats or my bookshelf (some I never even add). That, I don't like.

And it's not necessarily that I wasn't enjoying most of those books. Something else just came up or grabbed my attention.

Chuck wrote: "Do I give up or completely abandon books altogether with no intention of ever picking them back up? Rarely. I used to never do that. I would finish every book no matter what. A couple of years ago ..."

I'm more and more interested in counting pages read as opposed to (or in addition to ) books I read. It seems an even more valuable way to document my reading life. Thanks for this thoughtful post.

I think whether I finish a book or not depends upon the type of book and why I started to read it. If I am reading it for a book discussion, I usually finish it.
If it is a bit of fluff or a humorous book that I am only reading to pass the time and I am not being entertained or if the writing is poor, I will put it down.

Chrissie wrote: "I do not give up on books easily. I push myself to finish, BUT if I am 100% sure that the book cannot turn around for me, and if I am really hating the reading experience, I will dump it. I don't g..."

This is my general feeling.

However, if I am not enjoying a "good" book (one recommended to me or a classic or from the Guardian's list), I will sometimes "put it aside" with the intention of trying again someday. These are books which I feel I might like in a different mood...

Leslie, it is true that one's mood can influence how you react. That is why you should only read what you really feel for reading at that particular moment.

Chrissie wrote: "Leslie, it is true that one's mood can influence how you react. That is why you should only read what you really feel for reading at that particular moment."

So true! Although I would never have finished James Joyce's Ulysses if I hadn't pushed myself through it -- that is a book I would never be in the mood for!

Leslie ,
Yes Ulysses does take some pushing through . I am happy to be reading it together in the read along because we help push each other .

I couldn't make it through ULYSSES. It was just too tough for me, I guess. And I knew it was going to be tough and I was totally resolved to read it. Maybe sometime I'll try it again.

Chuck , it was on my to read list for so long and I was afraid to read it because I thought it was going to be too tough . Several of us have been doing a read along here and it is tough ! But we are helping each other . Petra who has been leading the discussion has provided a number of helpful links . We are more than half way through . I know for certain that I am not getting it all but I am getting a lot out of it and it's been fun. Take a look at our thread under read alongs if you are interested .

I read Ulysses ages ago and all I remember is that it dragged on and on and on and NEVER ended. Not a good memory! I am not going to try again.

Leslie wrote: "Chrissie wrote: "Leslie, it is true that one's mood can influence how you react. That is why you should only read what you really feel for reading at that particular moment."

So true! Although I ..."

SAme here!!!

Angela wrote: "Leslie ,
Yes Ulysses does take some pushing through . I am happy to be reading it together in the read along because we help push each other ."

Yes, I read it in a readalong as well. As with exercise, I find having someone else expecting me to show up and do it with them a great motivator!

I just asked this question in another group I belong to. I do not have any problems abandoning a book if it's not holding my interest. I'll give a book 2-3 chapters; usually by that time I know whether or not I'll enjoy it. I'll only re-try if a friend tells me keep going, it doesn't pickup until chapter 5.

I am a 50 something late bloomer when it comes to reading for enjoyment. I have so many great classics, traditional and contemporary, that I want to read so I have been pretty selective. This year I have read and/or listened to about 30 books and have finished all but one. I was so turned off by the Hunger Games (my friend loves the series) that I stopped after 1 chapter and Audible let me exchange it for The Book Thief which I am loving.

Beth wrote: "I am a 50 something late bloomer when it comes to reading for enjoyment. I have so many great classics, traditional and contemporary, that I want to read so I have been pretty selective. This..."

It is pretty darn amazing how at Audible we can return books we don't like, even if we read the whole thing. I think they are wonderful. Beth, I am not going near that one...... It may fit others, but I don't think it ill fit me.

Which...The Hunger Games or The Book Thief?

I am not going to read The Hunger Games, but I loved the The Book Thief!

I have put 2 of the last 4 books down(being more than half way through). Not for them being of poor quality, simply for the content being heavy and serious, in hopes of finding something easier and lighter. My job is stressful and serious, so I at times look for an escape.

Don't feel guilty Nesrine. I've tried to read it a couple of times and could not get into it. I'll probably give it a couple more tries before giving it up....

Well anyone who has looked at my profile and books currently reading will know that while , yes I do read and complete many many books there are many more on going, ones that have had a few chapters read and then been superseded or forgotten, perhaps for years. But honestly I think that to try and proscribe how people read is surely an idea put about by someone who is Not a bonefide bibliophile. Books can sometimes be powerful in influencing one from a single line or idea. There is no right or wrong otherwise why would anyone ever sell anthologies?! My daughter is dyslexic and rarely able to complete a full book but has gained so much from our frequent discussions of books and characters. Rule number 1 in my book. Never never try to dictate how or what someone reads.

The book I have been " reading " for the longest time is War and Peace which was given to be, unsought, as a gift 37 years ago. To please the person I read a few chapters then it languished on the shelves for many years and moved with us through 7 moves . Finally I am reading and enjoying and proud to say half way through! Maybe I will actually finish it, maybe not, but I am certainly appreciating it now.

If you want more thoughts on the philosophy of reading and book collections read Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader or Howards End Is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home

Tweedledum wrote: "Well anyone who has looked at my profile and books currently reading will know that while , yes I do read and complete many many books there are many more on going, ones that have had a few chapter..."

There are not really many fiction books I read like that (though War and Peace would be a candidate!) as I tend to forget the story or characters and need to go back to the beginning, but with non-fiction I frequently put a book aside for a few days, weeks, months or even years only to return to it later; there are a lot on my shelves that have bookmarks marking my place! Dipping into many books is both a joy and a pain; the size of your to-read pile never seems to diminish when you are attempting to read half of them simultaneously! ;-)

If I finished every book I started, I'd be very boring.

Greg wrote: "If I finished every book I started, I'd be very boring."

Ha, I kind of love that sentiment!

I definitely have not finished EVERY book, but I have finished most of the books I started. Even some that bored me to tears, but, because there have been some that started out boring me, and in the end, I was glad that I stuck it out, I always have that little nudge to finish a book..

Greg wrote: "If I finished every book I started, I'd be very boring."

Why would that make you boring?

Shirley wrote: "Greg wrote: "If I finished every book I started, I'd be very boring."

Why would that make you boring?"

I'd rather die than read a boring book.

Greg wrote: "Shirley wrote: "Greg wrote: "If I finished every book I started, I'd be very boring."

Why would that make you boring?"

I'd rather die than read a boring book."

Ah, I see. Well then, the challenge is not to pick up any boring books!!

Shirley wrote: "Greg wrote: "Shirley wrote: "Greg wrote: "If I finished every book I started, I'd be very boring."

Why would that make you boring?"

I'd rather die than read a boring book."

Ah, I see. Well then,..."

I am a maniac when it comes to books. I can't help myself but to pick up everything that takes my fancy.