How far do you force yourself through a book you're really not enjoying?

Cafe Society
21

I have a tough time putting a book down. I guess it is from my poor days when books were hard to find and money even harder. I will try to finish anything that I have bought. But if it ain’t working after, oh say 1/3, I often drop it.

But I just finished a book that was painful. I thought it was supposed to be a mystery. Maybe it was, kinda. But part of the mystery was why anyone would think it was interesting. I really should have put it down, because there are so many good books in the queue. Now that money is more plentiful than time, I should drop books more readily.

22

Not very far(although, there are exceptions, especially for books in series). If I get a solid start on a book, I will usually finish it. But if I pick up a book at the library because it looks interesting and it just doesn’t grab me, I let it sit in my to be read pile till near it’s due date and then it goes back.

It can be hard to tell by reading the cover whether something is likely to appeal to me or not, so I don’t feel too guilty about doing so.

23

Depends how far I’ve gone into it. I’ve more of a “point of no return” past which I’ll slog through to the end.
If I think its bad within the first chapter I usually toss it. But if I’ve read more I’ll slog through till the end. I might skim through most of it though, but I suffer from a nasty case of “must know what happened” which requires I get to the end of it.

Which sucks if the book is one of those “unfinished” stories or part of a set.

24

It depends. If I find myself wondering as I’m reading it why I’m reading it, then chances are I’ll pitch it fairly quickly.

The one book I dropped out of horror was a Tom Clancy book. I forget which one, but it had a submarine sink and drown all the sailors aboard.

Ivylad was in the Navy, serving on a submarine at the time on a six-month Med run. I had a newborn and a three-year-old. I didn’t need those thoughts in my head.

25

RUN! I’ll give you ten hands to have morning baby sear the life force from your spirit.

<tangent>How do you tell someone that gave you a book they are crazy about that it not only lowered your iq, shortened your life, but it also lowered your opinion of them? My mother in law found the Natural History of the Senses to be amazing and gave it to me after I loaned her Botany of Desire. She thought they were similar. I was clawing my eyes out after the first page of her book. shudder </tangent>

26

This works for me too. I get almost all my books from Amazon, and the Search Inside feature has saved me a ton of money. I can usually tell from the first few pages if I like the writing style. If I like the style, I can finish anything, even if the story doesn’t go where I want it to go.

But I read almost 600 pages of The Historian before tossing it. Or rather, skimming to the end to see what happened.

27

That’s the problem. I actually (and this may lower *your *opinion of *my *IQ) like Jean Auel’s books - even the later ones, which make no pretense at being anything other than Neolithic Porn.

So now my grandmother thinks anything with a fur wrap and a spear on the cover is just up my alley. Urg. No. Thanks for playing, Grandma.

If she gets me the other People of the Blank books, I’ll know better. I’ll just take them back to the bookstore for credit.

28

My tolerance for crap books is getting lower all the time. I’m running out of years and there are far too many good books on my To Read pile without wasting time wading through garbage.

I’m up to page 31 of Close by Martina Cole and I can’t see me getting much further forward. I used to enjoy her books but there’s a horrible sameness about this one. I waited five weeks to borrow it from the library so I may give it to the end of the present chapter but no more than that.

29

That pretty much describes it for me. Sometimes it’s just a few pages, and sometimes (albeit much less often) halfway through the book.

I never felt the compulsion to finish any book that I didn’t enjoy (unless it was required by one of my classes or another).

Well, that’s not quite true. I read Moby Dick on my own, and I probably would’ve given up halfway through if it was any other book. But I guess I wanted to be able to say I read Moby Dick from cover to cover. And I’m glad I did, not just for the bragging rights. It may be extremely dry and overly wordy in parts, but it’s undeniably a great piece of art.

30

I can’t really think of a book I hated before leaving high school; either I was really lucky, or my acceptance level was high. Actually, now that I think of it I used to enjoy the occasional Star Trek book, so perhaps it was the latter. :wink:

I’ll drop a book any time picking it up and reading onward seems like a chore, or if the writing style is painful, or if the writer doesn’t seem like they have a worthwhile destination in mind. Like eleanorigby, my theory is that there were millions of books around when I was born, and at least a thousand times more written each year than I’ll ever get to read, so ditching something useless now just means more time for good stuff.

I’ll stick with something longer if it’s for education, was recommended, or if I’m planning on reviewing it somehow. OTOH, back in the early days of the 'net, my website had a book review section, and I invented a new rating unit (the black hole) for when a book was worse than zero stars, and truly sucked (pun(s) probably intended, I don’t recall). In those few cases, I’d read ahead just enough to get some good examples of horrid prose or lame plot devices, then pitch it.

31

I try to finish the books that my reading club chooses, because if I don’t make some effort I’ll miss out on the discussions that follow the book. Some of them I’ve made an effort to finish and have given up because I was losing the will to live. However, most of them I’ve gone back to and have finished eventually, but that’s when I can read because I want to and not because I feel I have to.

32

maybe a 100 pages but with a caveat. If you’re on a 16 hour plane ride and don’t have more books, I’ll read whatever I’ve got. I have had to read some truely horrendous pieces of total shit because of being stuck on a plane.

Ted Bell is an author you should run from. Gah, the 007 style hits a nadir with his crap.

Clive Cussler is one almost guaranteed to be a festering pile of dog turds that stretches incredulity further than than the Magnum. Argh, and I get stuck buying his crap probably once per year because there is like 2 minutes to buy a book in the airport bookstore before going on a long flight.

John Grisham falls into that category too. Has written 2 or 3 entertaining books, only trouble is he’s rewritten each of those a dozen times. He’s also in every damn airport bookstore.

Lest you think I’m bitter, there’s nothing like finding a favorite author that’s come out with a new book you didn’t know about it when there’s 2 minutes to buy something before getting on that trans pacific flight. :slight_smile:

Ok, I’ve read some truely awful pieces of regurgitate cud when travelling in China in the 1980’s. Let’s face it, not a lot of english language works were widely available and book swaps with grotty backpackers like myself often yielded festering radioactive tumors. I read a lot of shit then. Mainly classics, which were out of copywrite and widely available in China for almost nothing. It’s the only reason I finished Ken Keasey’s Sometimes a Great Notion. I’d read half in University and actually went so far as to throw it away in disgust. Found it in China before a 3 day train ride by myself, so managed to finish it…and only because it was a 3 day train ride and bored out of my gourd. That my friend is a benchmark for a book that really sucks – you’ll only finish it if you’re on a three day train ride by yourself.

33

I’m funny about it.

There’s a weird middle gray area of the book where I’ll throw it down unread, never to return. I usually give it three or so chapters, and if I detect it draining my will to live, away it goes. However, if I make it too far past the midpoint, or if even one minor character is moderately interesting, I suffer from major “must see how it ends” disease and must finish the pile of steaming vomit. Otherwise, the unfinished plotline, no matter how inane and life-draining will nibble at me incessantly for months. The only thing worse than actually finishing a really, really bad book is obsessively wondering how a really, really bad book ends.

In one memorable recent example, the book was actually so horribly bad that I finished it with a sense of grim dread only to hurl it violently across the room babbling incoherently about its numerous, numerous shortcomings to my husband. It was so bad, I stood up, walked across the room, picked it up and then threw it against the wall again, harder, much to my husband’s entertainment.

34

That’ll teach it! Bad book! BAD book! :smiley:

35

In a previous thread on this topic I related the story of a friend who HATED a book he had to read for class; The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordechai Richler. When we was done - on Halloween - three of us, in silly costumes and bombed on Blackheart Rum (worst. hangover. ever) took the book to the bridge which spanned the loch on campus (we were exchange students in Scotland), tied, taped and otherwise affixed the book to several rocks and other heavy things, doused it in said rum, lit it on fire and kicked it off the bridge into the loch. 'twern’t no Viking funeral - more like a Mafia hit with extreme prejudice.

My friend howled like a rabid banshee (I know, Irish, not Scottish - sue me) as the book sank beneath the surface of the water.

I’d say “good times” to close this off - but it was more surreal than anything. And boy did my head hurt the next morning…

36

My secret is that I never actually officially give up on a book. I’m usually reading several at once, so if one doesn’t interest me, I just won’t get back to it this week (this month…this year…this lifetime). Eventually that book that I’m still reading ends up back in the bookshelf, or at the bottom of a pile, or in a box. I haven’t stopped reading it, I’m just on a break. There are books that I’ve been reading for 25 years. I think Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer has moved with me about four times. But I haven’t given up on it. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll be stuck on a train in China, and it will be just the thing.

37

I must have a high crap tolerance. I read a lot, and the only book I never finished was Oliver Twist. I’d read and thoroughly enjoyed A Tale of Two Cities, so I thought I’d try some more Dickens. But I think I gave up on OT less than halfway through. My simple plot summary of Oliver Twist:

Ooooh, my life is miserable! Woe is me!

Oh, things are looking up! My life is wonderful!

Oh dear, now everything is terrible! Woe! Woe!

Wowie! I love life! I have the happiest life in the world!

Man, now my life sucks again.

What’s that? Why, what a beautiful world! Ain’t life grand?

Alas! Gloom, despair, and agony on me! Deep dark depression, excessive misery …

And so on, ad nauseum.
I got halfway through Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October before I had to put it down, but I came back and finished it after reading a different book. I guess I just needed to take a break from it, or something. To me, Clancy violated that old rule that says, “If you put a pistol on the mantlepiece in the first act, it had better get used in the last act” (or something like that). He simply wore me out by going into such infinitesimal detail describing every knob, switch, and gauge in the submarine’s control room. Too much unnecessary information. One Clancy book was enough for me.
Call me weird, but I really enjoyed the People of … books. (The series is actually called “The First North Americans”.) People of the Wolf is the first in the series. I read nine of the first ten. I came across them when they were donated to the homeless shelter I lived in at the time.

I love reading Piers Anthony, too. And my reading list for the last couple of years is comprised mostly of Dungeons & Dragons novels. I recently finished a trilogy that I almost gave up on after reading the second book. The first book was okay, but the second book was getting vaguely Oliver Twisty. But I’m glad I read the third book, because I thought it kicked ass.

I’ve kept a record of every book I’ve read since November of 1979. I should post that up on my Web site. It could prove interesting.

38

Wow! I wish I’d done that. What made you start, and isn’t it kind of a pain to keep up with? Do you include books that you tried, but gave up on, so you know whether or not you should try them again?

39

My rule is simple: I read until I’m absolutely sure that the author had absolutely no intention of appealing to a towering intellect such as mine. If the writing is bad in a highly amusing way, I will keep ploughing through it. But if it possesses no entertaining qualities, then I forget it.

My record for shortest drop time was on Pallas, by L. Neal Smith, which looks like what would happen if Ann Coulter wrote science fiction (only worse). I read for seven pages, just long enough to make sure that it wasn’t a joke.

Other drops that I can remember: The Sword of Shanarra, by Terry Brooks–about 300 pages. One of the Gor novels by John Norman–100 pages, the last sixty of which consisted of a character closing and locking a door. Lord of the Isles, by David Drake–about 400 pages. The Third Millenium, by Paul D. Meier–150 pages. (The last one is a dumbed-down version of Left Behind, which I did finish, for reasons that will remain unexplained even to myself.)

40

I have started both Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Great Expectations several times each. Tess gets me to about chapter 7; Great Expectations usually loses me by the end of the first chapter (I just hate reading Dickens; give me the movie any day!).