I used to force myself to finish every book I started, hoping against hope that even the books that I hated would get better or would have some redeeming conclusion. Big mistake. Then I decided to read at least the first hundred pages, come what may; if the author hadn’t hooked me by then, I could cast the book aside guilt-free. Now I’m reading Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and it just ain’t doin’ it for me. I think I may have to go to a new first-50-pages rule. :rolleyes:
Varies. These days, I definitely shorten it up - 50 to 100 pages. Back in the day I was like you. With The Shipping News, I plowed through 2/3’s of it before I gave myself permission to frisbee it across the room - I mean, it *won awards * - it *must * be good, right? Oy.
Bad book, IMHO, but at least it broke me of the need to finish bad books.
One - From Seed to Seed by Nicholas Harberd, I made it through maybe 100 out of 300 or so pages. it is essentially a year’s diary related to a single weed. While i enjoyed the concept and parts of it, it had too much deep genetics for me.
The other, The Tree by Colin Tudge, I made it less than 100 out of 3-400. Basically every damn thing about trees. but he lost me when he spent too much time early on on taxonomy. Could have skipped around for the more interesting stuff, but didn’t care to.
The third, I Wish I’d Been There was a collection of maybe 20 essays by historians, positing “what if” they had been present at various pivotal times/places. Read parts of the first 2, and didn’t care for the concept or execution. Could have jumped around, but didn’t feel like it.
In some respects my willingness to finish a book I’m not really thrilled with depends on whether I have alternative reading material readily available. If I just came back from the library with 5 books, I may not give the first one as much effort if I still have a stack of 4 unread books, or if a new magazine just came in the mail.
Also relevant is the “ease” of reading. I may be more likely to slog through a novel I’m less than thrilled with, than a heavy scientific text.
Don’t anticipate any difficulty finishing the one I’m currently enjoying - Piano, The Making of A Steinway Concert Grand. Will likely head to the library tonight.
Really, life is too short, and there are already thousands of books I want to read that I’ll never get to.
There are a few books which I’ve finished despite not liking, but they fell into the “surely this gets better, right?” train-wreck category of books. But, still, I was at least enjoying my own bemusement. If I’m seriously not enjoying anything about the process, out it goes.
If it helps to have outside permission, consider it granted. I found Caged Bird way overwrought and overhyped (the autobiography, not the poem). And I did finish it. It doesn’t get better.
Fortunately, the SDMB is teaching me to do better. Often times, I’ll open a thread, find out it is the same old same old and instead of finishing it, I must leave the thread.
Then again, I just slogged through a TRILOGY of badness. My mother in law has gone native (married an indian, so now she’s indian) and gave me a book called People of the Raven which I tortured myself to read mostly because it was written by anthropologists about the tribes out west. Then…she gave me 2 more in the series. I read every damn one of them.
I have learned to never read a book by Marry Higgens Clark because I hate myself so thoroughly for having to finish it even though each page is tortuous.
If it’s just for enjoyment, i’ll happily drop it. If it’s for edification, then i may continue with a dull book in order to learn something from it, especially if i’m reading it for a specific reason.
I used to also read to the end no matter what, but recently I started reading a book by a bloke called Patrick Robinson.
I’ve read another of his books - Kilo Class - and although it was a good yarn, it was riddled with the most ridiculously hyperbolic pro-military anti-liberal rants.
This latest book was no different - and although I expect a bit of pro-war tubthumping in this type of adventure book, Robinson makes it so intrusive that I just couldn’t be arsed to read any more.
The more I read the more I think that life’s too short to spend on crap books.
This is a trick my wife (Bin-Gay) told me about—not sure where she got it. You take your age and subtract if from 100. As you get older you only have so much time–if the book hasn’t got your attention by (in my case 53 pages) then I am off to find another book. As WhyNot mentioned–there are too many books to slog through something you aren’t enjoying–and lets face it as you get older you have less and less time to read them.
So that is the technique I use for what it is worth!
I’m a book finisher too. I’ve read raves all over about George R.R. Martin’s epic and decided to start with A Game of Thrones. I really had to force myself through it and I wonder why everyone else in the world seems to love it so much.
Oh, God, that was one of my recent trainwrecks. I just kept waiting for it to all make some sort of sense, or at least elevate itself out of suckitude. Only, it didn’t. Horrid book. I’m afraid I might be getting the sequels for Christmas.
I suffer from severe book finishing guilt. I used to force myself to finish any and all books but the last Jean Auel book cured me of that. I usually give a book 75-100 pages before I give up on it. Then it goes to live on the “Never going to read and should really donate to the book sale” pile that never makes it to the book sale. I also suffer from the guilt of inflicting a bad book on another unsuspecting reader. That’s why I haven’t donated that huge of books yet. Yeah, that’s it.
I’ll usually finish fiction no matter what. I’m as interested in why it’s bad as I am in the plot. Non-fiction, especially anthologies, is more variable. I often read only the sections that interest me. I know this within about 5 pages. I don’t tend to finish a single-author non-fiction book that doesn’t grab me after one chapter.
I’ll drop a book in a second if it’s not doing it for me; at any give time, I have between 100 and 200 books actively queued up to read, so I don’t have time to screw around. I’ve read enough that I can tell if something’s going to improve or if it’s hopeless, and I’ll quickly move on.
I give it about three chapters or so, especially for light fiction. By then I can usually tell if I’m going to like the writing style or not.
If the book is highly recommended, or if I’ve been warned that it starts slowly, I will stick with it longer. I can think of a few books that I almost gave up on, that I’m glad I didn’t.
I had forgotten about The Shipping News --that is definitely on the List!
I give myself about 3 chapters. By the end of chapter 3, if I can’t remember the main character’s name or I don’t care about what is happening-on to the next one.
I used to have such guilt about this-and then I realized that no matter what, I will never get to read all the books that I want to, so why waste time on the ones I don’t want to?
I am a cured Book Finisher. Not recovering: cured. I’ll stop reading even good books - nonfiction - if the last chapters appear to contain nothing of substance.
Fiction I’ll stop reading at any point. At the supermarket yesterday I read the first chapter of James Patterson’s Mary, Mary just to see if his writing is as bad as everybody says. It was. There’s no possibility of the book being accepted as a potentially professional manuscript if it had shown up in a slush pile. He’s a best seller solely because he’s become a Brand Name. How he became a Brand Name is one of those unfathomable mysteries of life.
Other than obvious dreck my test of fiction is if I want to pick up the book again after I put it down. If I’m not excited by the prospect the book stays in a pile. I have hundreds of to-be-read books available around me at any moment. Some of those are bound to be exciting and enticing. They deserve to be read more than the ones who fail that test. Occasionally I’ll go back to an abandoned book to see if the timing rather than the prose was wrong but few books get a second chance these days. Why should they?
