I’ve been reading this book, off and on, for about a month and a half now. (I generally read three or four books at a time, picking up and leaving off as the mood strikes me, and I’ll go through a dozen or more books a month.)
This particular book is quite disturbing to me. I don’t want to say what book it is, because, really, it doesn’t matter. Suffice it to say that it is a book of nonfiction, tangentially related to my field, that is well-written and not byzantine. But I find the subject matter highly, highly disturbing, for reasons I can’t really pinpoint. But it’s disturbing enough that I’ve found myself taking a longer route around the living room so as to avoid the armchair next to which this book is currently reposing.
Every few days, I pick it up again and read it for an hour or so, until, once again, I have to put it down because it just makes me uncomfortable. But I am determined (200 pages from the end) to finish it. I can only think of, perhaps, three other books that I haven’t finished in my life. And I’ve read some pretty cruddy books, but once I start, I want to finish.
Do you finish books? Or if you find a book boring/poorly written/disturbing, do you walk away? How?
There’s been a few books I haven’t finished over the years, including one that was a gift from a local parish–I never got past page 2. Sometimes it’s boring from the get-go, sometimes I try to get through it but eventually give up, and sometimes I like it but eventually lose interest. For me, it’s not so much that I decide not to finish the book, it’s just I never bother to pick it up again. Sometimes I go back later and finish them, or start them from the beginning (in which case I usually get farther than the first time, if not to the end). I always try to finish books (unless I really hate them), but sometimes I just don’t.
I usually finish books. But then books usually pull me in.
I couldn’t finish The Colour of Magic (Discworld) because it’s not a patch in just about all of Terry’s other discworld books.
I almost left ‘The Truth’ unfinished, but I picked it up determined to finish it and actually ended up really enjoying it.
I’ve started ‘A Once and Future King’ and left it unfinished for months. I know it may turn out to be very good, but so far it’s childishness (possibly deliberate in the early parts) is making it difficult to stay at it.
I’m frankly amazed that I finished the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, because that reeeeeealy drags at times.
The only books I have been able to say that I had to fight myself to put them down are the Harry Potter books. They are what re-introduced me to reading. And although the wit and cleverness of discworld isn’t there, and the writing intelect and talent of great works isn’t there, it’s the familiarity and sympathy with the characters that hooks me.
Im an avid reader and when I find subject matter I like I always finish it, usually very quickly.
I picked up Angela’s Ashes at a resale shop a few months ago for 50 cents. I just can’t get into it. I assumed it would be something I would be interested in based on my usual taste in books but so far it isn’t reeling me in.
Right now the main character is 4 or 5 years old and telling it from his point of view, which is like…well listening to a 4 or 5 year old tell a story.
Im only about 30 pages in so maybe if I push myself to continue I’ll latch onto something that sparks my interest enough to finish it.
A few years ago I tried to read David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest because I had enjoyed another novel of his, The Broom of the System.
I never finished Infinite Jest. I can’t remember precise details, but the problem was essentially that the writing was so complex that I got totally confused as to what was supposed to be going on and got to a point where I simply could no longer make sense of the whole thing and stopped reading it. I recall the point where I gave up on it was almost half-way through the more than 400 (!) pages,
BUT, based on having liked The Broom of the System, I’ve since read other books Wallace has written and have pretty consistently enjoyed them.
I’m not recalling any other books I couldn’t finish.
Yep, I also read several books at once. And I frequently walk away from books I start that are unpleasant or even too complicated to read unless my brain is unoccupied by work study etc. (ie. when I’m on holidays). For instance, a few years ago I started reading a rather well-researched and written book on the West family (as in Fred West). Started disturbing (his parents had a very fucked-up marriage) and just got more and more disturbing. Walked away from that one, couldn’t even bear to have it in the house.
I also have to admit that I have never finished The Crimson Petal and the White.
Once it gets painful for me to read a book, I stop reading it. There are other, more enjoyable books around, even if I have to reread something.
There’s one exception: if it’s near the end of a series I’ve read most of, I try my hardest to finish it.
This principle was behind my actually finished Orson Scott Card’s Children of the Mind. I just wish I’d realized beforehand that it wasn’t worth it, because the process was excruciating as hell.
When I had more time and less money I had a rule that if I bought it I read it. Now that money is more plentiful and time less so, I read the first quarter and if I don’t enjoy it for any reason, I put it down. Occasionally I return to it at a later date.
I have put down Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel, but may return to it since so many dopers have posted on how great it is.
I’m a multiple-book-reader myself. I’ve got about five going right now.
There are some books which I’ve had for a very long time which I haven’t finished yet, but I never completely give up on a book-- I always go back and try again, even if it’s years later.
I’ve never yet finished any of the Lord of the Rings books, and I’ve started The Name of the Rose about four times . . . one of these days I’ll dedicate myself to finishing them.
Amen. Some of this series is just tremendous, but man, when it sucks it sucks BAD.
I forced myself through the first half of Frank Herberts’ Dune because it was so highly regarded by others. I finally got to one spot that was terrific, and said to myself, “Aha! It DOES get better; I’m so glad I didn’t give up!” And shortly thereafter, it started sucking again. I made my way through it anyway, but I still think it was a waste of my time.
Well, it’s hard to finished a book in which you tore out the offending pages and burned. The hero commits adultery with one of the suspects.
When I saw the movie made from the book(having never gotten to the end), I was not surprised that they made the heror ecently widowed . Turns out, though, that the guilt of his actions made him ignore the fact that that suspect was pivotal in solving the murder. :wally
Once started, I can’t stop reading a book. There’s several that I should have stopped reading because I got nothing out of them but hours of wasted time, but no, I have to complete it or I become really tortured (Because what if the last twenty pages are the best thing I’ve ever read and change my life, even though the first three hundred pages were only a notch above my introductory writing classes? I’ll never know if I stop!). There are some books it has taken me months to read, though, because I hated them so much. But eventually, they all get finished.
I almost always finish books I start, or at least finish one before I start another. A couple exceptions:
The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy: I had to set this book aside about halfway through, and go read something else before coming back to it. I simply needed a break from Clancy padding his word count by describing each and every dial and gauge and control on the submarine in infinitesimal detail.
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens: I gave up, again, about halfway through. I really enjoyed A Tale of Two Cities, so I thought I might like Oliver Twist. Unfortunately, the repetitive cycle of “things are bad for Oliver” - “things are looking up” - “things are bad for Oliver” - “things are looking up”, combined with Oliver’s melodramatic alternation between whimpering and cheerfulness, just got to be too much.
Aside from books that are just so poorly written it’s a pain to read them (a certain Dean Koontz novel comes to mind), I was unable to finish Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver. A bit too Baroque (i. e., dense) for me.
I have too many books to read to make myself finish the ones I don’t want to finish. Ever since I went through library school, I have been perfectly happy to skim, sample, and stop partway through. Just this month I have probably quit reading 2 or 3 books, and I liked them OK, but they were getting tedious and heavier going than I was willing to do right then. I can always get them some other time (they’re all library books, and hey, I work there.)
Today I was proud that I returned a bunch of books, getting my total of library books down to 30 from 45 (lots of those were picture books, though). But then I checked 8 more out, and only one of them was for the kids. I don’t have time to read the books I have on my shelf, but I always get more. Out of this pile, I probably won’t finish the enormous but fascinating tome on Victorian family life, or the neat-looking one about back-to-the-land hippies in the 70s, but I’ll get a good taste of what they’re about. Oh well, at least it’s a cheap addiction.
I do the multi-tasking book thing too; I’ll usually have five or six going of different genres, not counting textbooks or other reading for work. I used to have an unwritten principle about not finishing a book but I finally came to my senses (though not before reading Brin’s Earth and Rand’s Atlas Shrugged) and decided that if I don’t like a book by a third of the way through, I’m not going to like it. That didn’t help me with Cryptonomicon, though. There were parts of that book I really liked, but the ending…grrr.
If I want to start a really long book I try to clear decks. Right now I’m trying to schedule in Gould’s The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (which I should have read a long time ago). Also on the list is Don Quixote which I (shamefully) have not yet read, but am looking forward to in anticipation.
I used to be in the “must finish the book” club too…Until I read Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way and decided that life was far, far too short to be stuck in that kind of hellish tedium ever again. Bah.