I should mention what I call the “Orlando Sentinel Rule”. When browsing trade paperbacks, I flip to the reviews at the front; if they couldn’t get a positive review from that newspaper, I don’t bother.
This is, however, a minimum (necessary but not sufficient) condition, based on the fact that the Sentinel reviews everything, and likes almost all of it.
I have found www.goodreads.com to be very helpful. You can put in and rate all of the books you’ve read, make friends with other people, and compare how your book list and ratings compare to other people. If a friend of mine and I have a compatibility rating of 90%, I’m likely to dig through their read book list to find something of interest. I also pay attention when they rate a new book or add it to their “to read” list.
When I’m not looking for something specific on a recommendation, or for a well-respected author in a genre I like, my strategy is similar: I wander through the bookstore looking for anything that jumps out at me. Titles are definitely important, and cover art as well. (Never judge a book by its cover? Hah!) If it’s a used bookstore (the best kind of bookstore), I also give at least a glance to any book that looks very well worn, at least if it looks well-worn in a well-loved kind of way. It’s hard to describe, really, and there’s no one criterion to apply. Maybe it would be best to describe it as a reader’s sixth sense: I’ve never understood it, but it usually leads me to good things.
When I actually pick up a book on the shelf, though, the first thing I do is read the first page. Then I flip to somewhere random in the middle of the book and read paragraphs here and there. That gives me a gauge of the author’s voice and how he or she respects it once you get to the meat of the story.
Wow, I’m so with you on that one. “completely loathsome in an interesting way” is a great way to describe it. There’s very few books that I really, actually throw across the room when I’m done with them, and that’s one of them.
When I am reading a book and I have a hard time keeping my eyes open, it is time to try another book. Either that or go to bed.
If I read the same paragraph more than twice, and not only don’t know what happened in it, but don’t care, I toss the book. Unless it’s been recommended to my by someone I really respect, in which case I’ll stick it out for about the first 100 pages. If I still don’t care by then, I don’t have to decide to put the book down. Chances are I’ve already fallen asleep.
I used to read a lot. I read most of the common fantasy series you could pick up in airport book stores, because that was where I usually remembered to pick up something.
I read the Shananrra series, not great but passed the time. And one time the best looking book was a one from that series, the Druid of Shannarra so I picked it up. I was about 90% of the way through it(and it’s 600 pages or so) when I came across a monster called the Maw Grint. Suddenly I realized I had read the book before, because I remembered the Maw Grint. How crappy and chiche does a book have to be when you can get 90% of the way through it and not have anything stand out as rememberable?
I don’t even start truly bad books. I get enough recommendations about books that I don’t have to start books that are so bad that I would give up after a few pages. I quit reading mediocre books somewhere around a quarter of the way through them. If you want more motivation to read books, join a book club. Assuming the club is being run properly, the books will be reasonably good on average, and if the book turns out to be mediocre in your estimation, you can have fun criticizing it.
I think usually about a paragraph or so is enough to know if I am going to enjoy the experience of reading the book. If I pick up a book and the premise looks interesting I just flip it open and read a little. If I like that bit I borrow it or buy it.
Every writer knows the importance of grabbing the reader early so if the first few pages are no good don’t expect the book to improve. In fact very few books become better as you go along. Once in a while you are disappointed that a book is over but generally, even with books you enjoy, your level of enjoyment doesn’t increase as you continue reading. So when the pleasure begins to thin out I have learned to skim the remainder to find out what happens without investing the same amount of time as in the earlier reading.
My current rule is roughly 1/4 or 1/3 of the book. I used always read all of the book, but now that I have more money and less time, I am more selective.
I usually give a book about 50 pages. If I’m not hooked by then, it’s not worth my time. Mind you, I also have the attention span of a fruitfly, and I typically am reading 2 or 3 books at a time, plus precious video gaming time, so I don’t have time to waste on something that I don’t care about.
That probably sounded like a pompous douchebag.
I made it through all of The Davinci Code, hating myself as I did. I’m generally pretty persistent that way. The last Dean Koontz novel I read though, I gave up after about five pages. Can’t recall the title, thankfully.
Of course, sometimes I’m so masochistic it takes me several sequels to give up on a bad series. I actually had to force myself to stop buying the Anderson/Herbert Jr. Dune prequels.
Damn, I hate prologues. If a novel has a prologue, that’s enough to make me consider giving up on it right there. Just start telling your story already. Start with something I can care about immediately (which can be character descriptions, if they’re done interestingly), not something that will only make sense 100 pages later.
Sometimes, when I find a book rough going, and I wonder whether it’s worth keeping with, I’ll check out the reader reviews on Amazon. If they say something like, “It starts out slow but gets better later,” or “the early part of the book sets up things that pay off by the end,” I’ll be more inclined to stick with it than if they say either “This book sucks!” or “This book was great! I couldn’t put it down!” In the latter case, I’ll surmise that it’s just not my kind of book, though it may be theirs.
An observation: There are two kinds of enjoyment one gets from reading a book: the During kind and the After kind. (And a similar thing can be said about other forms of art/entertainment, like movies.) The During is the enjoyment you get while you’re reading: you keep eagerly turning pages to see what happens next, or you enjoy the author’s language or descriptive ability or storytelling skills, or it just makes you laugh. The After is what stays with you after the book is over: the characters you’ve come to care about, the insights and perspectives you’ve gained, the way it gives you something to think about or talk about, what it’s added to your experience.
You ought to be able to tell fairly soon whether a book is going to provide you with the During kind of enjoyment. If it doesn’t grab you within the first chapter or two, chances are you’re not going to enjoy the rest of it either (though there are exceptions to this rule). To tell whether the book is going to provide you with the After kind of enjoyment (as opposed to being an empty, forgettable, junk-food read), you may have to consult people who’ve read it—what’s it’s reputation among other readers, particularly those you know and trust?
Very perceptive!
The best books are the ones where, after you’ve finished, you feel that the story continues. You don’t mind that the story might have been open-ended (a common criticism of The Crimson Petal and the White) because in your mind, the characters are still alive to you, and you wonder what they’re doing. With lesser books, when you’re done, you’re done. It might have been a good read but you realize that’s all it was – you’re not left with much to think about.
Oh God, me too. I typically don’t read them. I never really understood them, anyways - the only time I’ve ever gotten anything out of a prologue is going back and reading it AFTER I read the book. At that point, if it’s a book I really like, the prologue provides additional insight/character development/history/whatever. Other than that, they’re usually completely superfluous, and shouldn’t be in the book at all.
I usually notice right away if I’ll like a book or not, but I have been fooled. I’m reading one right now that is about a middle-class woman with three children becoming homeless. I thought I would be reading about someone coping with misfortune and struggling with society. Instead, the woman is only homeless because she’s an idiot. I’m still reading since it’s a short book, but I really feel ripped off.
Pardon me for not reading the whole thread (reading’s haaaa-aaard!) - my take is if it isn’t interesting me, and I don’t care about what happens to anyone and the writing sucks, I’ll drop it. Life is too short to waste it reading bad books when there are so many books out there that are a sheer joy to read.
Hey, some of my favorite books are crap!
In my youth, I’d plod through. I made it through *The Fellowship of the Ring *by assigning myself one chapter a day, to be read before I read something I liked.
Nowadays, not so much. I’ll give it maybe 50 pages, if that, though I have been fooled. I made it about 100 pages from the end of the 6th Harry Potter book before I realized that Harry was a useless waste of fictional flesh and therefore had no more interest in reading about him. The book is still around somewhere, in a box, and might still have a scrap of paper marking my epiphany.
I’m with **Thudlow Boink **and Athena - prologues suck.
I’m another one who doesn’t really put books down just because they’re bad. Sometimes it’s just fun to keep reading to see what the author is going to do or say, even if it makes no sense or the writing is horrible. But then I enjoy B movies and watching the MST3K movies without the snarky comments. The exception to this is the Twilight series. I read the first book because my daughter was hounding me to give it a shot and I didn’t have anything else I felt like reading at the time. Good God in Heaven is Stephanie Meyers a twit. Once my daughter told me Bella’s demon-childs’ name (now that’s one He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named), I almost cried in despair.
The only book I’ve skipped to the end and then completely given up on was one about this guy who falls down a well to the center of the earth (or somewhere) and keeps trying to find his way to the surface. But he never gets there, he keeps finding an exit which leads him to a “world” almost just like the one he left. I had to skip to the end to see if anything different happened to this guy to decide if it was worth slogging through. It was the most tedious and uninteresting book I’ve ever tried to read. I wish I could remember the title or the author’s name.