# Do you ever give up on a book? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 24, 2018, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-ever-give-up-on-a-book/820206 "2018-08-24T18:57:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2018, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-ever-give-up-on-a-book/820206/101 "2018-08-28T20:38:04Z")
I wonder if different reading styles are part of the difference here; when I read, while I see the words on the page, I more or less have a little mental movie running in my head. So stuff like writing style is mostly important as far as how well it lets that little movie flow while keeping things adequately described. Or, if it’s particularly bad, then the movie never gets started, and I’m literally consciously trying to parse sentences to figure out what the author is saying. So if I can get the movie going, I almost always finish the book, unless it’s just dumb or goofy for some reason. And I know I’m really rare in this regard, but I have not yet finished “Gardens of the Moon” by Steven Erikson, despite having finished like 30 other books since starting to read it. It’s not that he’s a bad writer, it’s that I just don’t like the story so far, and it’s seemed more like work than anything else. ---
**Author:** ![edspellman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/58956e/32.png) [@edspellman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/edspellman)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2018, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-ever-give-up-on-a-book/820206/102 "2018-08-28T23:01:02Z")
Smilla’s Sense of Snow- mystery set in Demark and Greenland. Starts out great, by mid book I felt it too muddled, turgid and contrived. Never finished. Crytponomicon. Too damn big! After more than 100 pages, saw almost 900 to go and gave up. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2018, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-ever-give-up-on-a-book/820206/103 "2018-08-29T00:24:48Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#): > > Oh, My God! I found a copy of […] What utter Crap! Completely unreadable dreck! How this guy rose to any position higher than Dog Catcher after people got a butt-load of that nonsense is well beyond me. His speeches were very good. Even now, I’m told that people who watch/listen to them find them very good. Like JFK or MLK. I /think/ that by that stage someone else was writing the speeches for him. Did not read more than a couple of pages of Game of Thrones. Once when young I started reading a particular SF book, and thought: _It must get better. They wouldn’t have published it if it was this bad all the way through_. I’m older and wiser now. When I was 9, stopped reading **Gone With the Wind** before I got to the end. I can’t handle tragedy. It breaks my heart. And I knew how GWtW ends ('frankly dear, I don’t give a damn"), and I didn’t want to watch Scarlet do that to herself. ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2018, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-ever-give-up-on-a-book/820206/104 "2018-08-29T03:07:32Z")
I read Battlefield Earth and enjoyed it well enough. So I thought I’d give the Mission Earth series a shot. Big mistake. This was before I heard of Dianetics or Scientology or I probably wouldn’t have even picked up BE. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2018, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-ever-give-up-on-a-book/820206/105 "2018-08-29T12:29:11Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > When I was 9, stopped reading **Gone With the Wind** before I got to the end. I can’t handle tragedy. It breaks my heart. And I knew how GWtW ends ('frankly dear, I don’t give a damn"), and I didn’t want to watch Scarlet do that to herself. But tomorrow is another day! ---
**Author:** ![stpauler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@stpauler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stpauler)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2018, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-ever-give-up-on-a-book/820206/106 "2018-08-30T13:46:36Z")
I just gave up on \*\*A People’s History of the Vampire Uprising \*\*by Raymond A. Villareal. The writing was so bad in the first two chapters that I had to move on. I liken the writing style to talking with a person who is staring at their Instagram feed at the same time. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f8ce5/32.png) [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Peyote_Coyote)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2018, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-ever-give-up-on-a-book/820206/107 "2018-09-01T10:41:11Z")
I tried three times to read Herman Hesse’s _Steppenwolf_, but I could never get past page 27. I quit reading Heinlein’s _The Cat Who Walks Through Walls_ after 90 pages or so. I read the first two sentences of _To Sail Beyond the Sunset_ and resolved not to read it. There are a fair number of books that I wish I hadn’t bothered to read and/or finish. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f8ce5/32.png) [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Peyote_Coyote)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2018, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-ever-give-up-on-a-book/820206/108 "2018-09-01T10:53:16Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > _Atlas Shrugged_; what a serious pile of self-indulgent crap. I can’t believe that Rand found a publisher. In response to you and other posters, I forced myself to read _Atlas Shrugged_ two summers ago. It truly is a piece of shit. As far as I’m concerned, Rand took much of her plotting techniques from 1930’s pulps. I think I figured out just about every major plot revelation by page 200 or so. It wasn’t difficult if you’ve read a fair number of Doc Savage novels. I will admit that Lester Dent and his ghosts wrote a fair amount of garbage, but at least you can read a Doc in an hour or two. It took me an entire summer to force myself through Rand’s “masterpiece.” That was only because I took a few breaks to read a couple of Repairman Jack novels, Burroughs’ \*Llana of Gathol[/] and _John Carter of Mars_, and Dumas’ _The Three Musketeers_. Afterwards, I read Dickens’ _Nicholas Nickleby_ to scour my mind. Rand’s characters are just believable as John Carter and Doc and his gang, but lack their nobility and sense of humor. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-ever-give-up-on-a-book/820206/109 "2018-09-04T16:55:59Z")
> [@Kron](#): > > Only once. > > Terry Brooks _Sword of Shannara_. I found it a slog, and ended up giving up. Weird, as it should have been right in my wheelhouse. I made it farther in the series. I should have quit, but I kept on, thinking at some point it would get better. The first book was bad. The second book wasn’t any better. About a third of the way into the third book, I realized things still weren’t getting any better, asked myself why I was bothering, and dropped the book and the series/author. Never looked back. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-ever-give-up-on-a-book/820206.md?page=5)