Do you give up on a book before you're done?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I rarely quit books. I can think of only two cases where I quit reading books because of the books themselves. The first, as I mentioned in another recent thread, was Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, which I quit a quarter of the way into it because it was too dull. The second was Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, which I quit when I was about 14 because I was having trouble understanding it - as I recall, a good deal of the dialogue is in French without a translation provided. I may come back to it one day, but not soon.

The second category is books that I haven’t finished reading because something else came up. This usually applies to books that I started reading at the end of the summer and which I had to put down once school began. Once I finally have time to return to them, I’ve been out of the book too long to return to it. This was the case with George Orwell’s 1984, Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, all of which I enjoyed (though WH is confusing!) but just didn’t have time for.

22

It used to be a point of honour with me that I would never give up on a book. Now that I’m a lot more than halfway through my life, I won’t waste time on books which don’t engage me, for whatever reason. Unless it’s for work or study, I won’t force myself to continue reading a booking which I don’t enjoy.

23

When I was in high school I got a copy of The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. I guess it’s a timeless classic of American literature and stuff if you can actually decipher the writing, but by the time I got to the third page and realized I had only actually read about 5 incredibly long run-on sentences, I put the book down because I realized I had no idea what was going on. Cooper’s writing style is definitely not for me.

24

Exactly. It’s not like you get a damn prize at the end. There are so many things that I *want * to read! Sometimes, I’m not the right person for the book I’ve picked up or it’s not the right book for me. If we meet again years later, maybe things will be different.

25

I stop reading books if they don’t interest me enough. I get really vivid mental pictures when I read a good book. It’s almost like I’m watching TV. Anyway, if I don’t get that with a book, its extremely hard for me to keep reading it. It’s almost as if I have to force my brain to understand the sentences and paragraphs and I end up re-reading pages or even whole chapters. Usually if I have a book like that I will just stop reading it.

It kind of sucks, though, because there are books that I really want to read. I would love to finish The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes (I think). It’s about Australia’s convict colony history, and I’m obsessed with Australia. But I have checked out that book at the library three times and I just cannot get past the first 1/3 of it. Plus it’s like a thousand pages long.

26

I couldn’t finish The Da Vinci Code because of the horrible characters and writing. Plus, I knew the ending anyway.

27

I’m a book finisher. I absolutely hated Glamorama by Brett Easton Ellis. I could only force my way 1/3 of the way through. It was absolute rubbish. Crap.

28

Wooh, If I had a dollar stuffed in each book where I stopped reading it I’d have enough money to buy more books and not finish them too.

I bet I quit almost half the books I start (less so these days though). I try not to let it bum me out too much.

29

Mark Twain agrees with you.

I tried to read Don Quixote a few months ago, and I just couldn’t. I think I got a couple of hundred pages in and I kept waiting for the story to start, but all I ever got was Don Quixote and Sancho Panza being wacky. If I want wacky I’ll watch the Three Stooges.

The Magic Mountain was another one I couldn’t finish, probably because the only thing that bores me more than politics is philosophy; and besides, the main character is such a wanker I quickly started rooting for his death. I seem to remember getting incredibly frustrated and flinging that piece of offal across the room the night before the final.

Usually, though, if I can’t get into a book, I’ll just put it aside for a couple of months or years until I’m ready to try again. I’ve been trying to read Middlemarch now for about eight years, and I always fizzle out right around the time Dorothea marries whatshisface, Casaba melon. I just don’t care about any of the characters. But maybe in another 5 or 10 years after I’ve grown a little more I’ll find something in one of them with which I can identify, and that will enable me to finish the cursed thing. And if not, who cares? There’s a million other books out there; put me in a library and I’m like a kid with a hundred dollar bill in a candy store.

30

I used to feel incredilby guilty for not finishing a book.

Then I hit 40 and realized that life was too short.

Books that I have not finished:

most Dickens–man, that man could run on and on, no? Liked ATOTC.

The Yearling

The Wind In the Willows

Sounder

Old Yeller

Wuthering Heights–but I like her sister’s novels a great deal.

  • Emerson’s Essays*
    yeah-they may be classics–whatever

A History of God -which I found fascinating but could not digest.

alot of John Irving–most Irving

there are more but I am more intrigued by this next category.

** Books that I could never get into**

Bonfire of the Vanities and all the rest of his books

Ulysses --did like Portrait of an Artist, though

most Faulkner

Mystic River

31

My general rule of thumb is that if there’s no discernible plot by page 100, the book gets put down. Neal Stephenson, author of The Baroque Cycle, I’m looking straight at you. If I’m really enjoying the characters or the writing, I’ll keep going, but overall I’m a plot-driven kind of gal.

32

I give up on books all the time. I probably only finish about one in four books that I start. There are a lot of crappy books with nice blurbs out there.

33

I read and finish a heck of a lot of books, but if I don’t like one I don’t hesitate to put it down. There are too many good books to read to waste time on the bad ones.

34

I’m another one from the life’s-too-short school of thought. I’m pretty good at picking out books I’ll like, but sometimes one just doesn’t appeal to me or is just bad and I take it right back to the library.

The only books I really try to finish are ones for my book club. We read a lot of items that I wouldn’t pick out on my own, and even when I’ve sometimes struggled, it’s generally been worth it. If nothing else, I’ve gotten to say why I didn’t like it.

GT

35

I tried reading **Paradise Lost ** a couple months back, but never made it through. I love Dante’s Inferno, and I’ve heard several people say that Paradise Lost is better.

I disagree. Milton’s language is rather convoluted(he would probbably say poetic), and I gave up after 5 chapters. I appreciated Donald Sutherland’s character in Animal house when he said “I find Milton probably as boring as you find Milton. Mrs. Milton found him boring too. He’s a little bit long-winded, he doesn’t translate very well into our generation, and his jokes are terrible.”

Someday I’ll try again, but I can’t work up the urge to do so.

**Don Quixote ** almost lost me at one point. I started getting really sick of the innumerable and mindnumbing subplots about the shephards and the girl and whats his face that alls ends up with them meeting at the inn. I ended up skipping one of the side-stories, and after that it got better. I was able to progress pretty well once the Don got back into the action.

I found the parts concerning the title character and Sancho to be quite interesting, but I wish Cervantes had laid off the subplots somewhat.

When I was a kid, I tried reading a book called Maniac McGee, about a kid who could run incredibly fast(like a superpower). I got through the first half pretty easily, but then once it got to the second part, it completely switched gears and started talking about zoo animals or something like that, something seemingly completely related to the story at hand. I lost interest at that point.

I’ve sometimes wondered if I should have tried harder to see what happened, that it was probably just a metaphor or something like that, but then again, I’m frankly not that interested in finding out how it ended(It’s not like it’s a classic or anything).

I never managed to make it through The Illiad. I tried last summer, but eventually just went to the cliffnotes to see what happened. I’ll try again this summer to see if it gets better. I want to read that before I read the Oddessy and the Aneaid…or should I just go straight to the more travel oriented stories?

36

Same here. I tried a couple years ago because I liked the movie(the Day_Lewis one), but I think this might be an example where the movie is actually better then the book.

I didn’t get very far before getting bored out of my skull.

37

Life is too short to waste time reading books you don’t like, or watching movies that bore you. I’ve yet to finish a book or movie I didn’t like and come away with anything positive from the experience. I give up on about 1/4th of the books I start, honestly. Why spend time that could be used to enjoy something you’ll like better on something you actively dislike? It just reminds me of Calvin’s dad and the “it builds character” nonsense.

38

There’ve been a few books recently that I almost didn’t finish, but did out of pure force of will. One was The Lucifer Principle by Howard Bloom. It was my first attempt to understand the concept of memes and, while a fascinating subject, bored me to tears. It probably has to do with the author’s writing style, which is bland and very self important IMHO.

Then there was a book that Meatros gave me to read called Creationism: The Bible Says No by Eric J. Hildeman (he wanted my opinion on the book as a theist) . Once again, fascinating and a perspective that I had never encountered before. But after a while I was like, “Okay! I get it! Move on already!”

Each book I ended up putting down for several weeks before I picked them back up again and forced my way to the end. But I almost never touched them again.

39

Same here. I have too many books I want to read to force myself through something I can’t stand. The best example of this is Tad Williams’ The Dragonbone Chair. I’m told that the book really takes off at page 160. I can’t make it past page 140, and I’ve tried twice. Never, ever, ever again.

I also couldn’t finish The Iliad, despite really wanting to.

I only made it about two chapters into Foucault’s Pendulum before I realized I hadn’t the slightest idea of what I had read or what the hell was going on. But I know Eco is like that.

40

Only book i’ve ever stopped reading part way through was the first of the Gormenghast books. I usually finish books, but couldn’t get into that one at all.