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

Cafe Society
41

I started doing it because my mom did it. She gave me a little hardcover notebook (my dad had a stack of these things left over from his Marine Corps days), and showed me how she wrote the year at the top of the page, and then listed each book’s title and author. So I did it like that, but I added my own touch - I recorded the number of pages for each book as well.

That notebook is kind of an interesting record of the changes in my handwriting over the years, too :wink: It’s also fun to compare the number of books read each year with where I was in my life. 1985 was my best year, when I read 61 books. I had just discovered that I enjoyed mysteries, and I found a couple prolific author’s whose works I devoured. My worst year was 1991. I had grown up without a television, but in ‘91 I finally moved out of my parents’ house for real, and I got a TV. I read only one (!) book that year :smiley:

In 1996 I got a computer and learned how to use the program Filemaker Pro, a database program. I transferred my reading record into a database (yay! searchable!) of my own design. And of course, the software allowed me to become more detailed in my records. Now, in addition to Title, Author, # of Pages, and Year Read, I also record each book’s Subtitle (if applicable), Series (if part of a trilogy or longer series), Volume/Book# (if part of a series), Genre, Copyright Year, Publisher, and ISBN Number.

My “Genre” list looks like this:

Fiction:
Science Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction & Fantasy (a genre I had to define to describe Piers Anthony’s Robot Adept series), Action, Adventure, Drama, Romance (yeah, I read a couple romance novels in high school after I found out they had sex scenes :smiley: ), Mystery, Comedy/Humor, Horror, Suspense, Historical Fiction

Non-Fiction:
History, Religion, Biography, Self-Help, Poetry, Commentary, Sports, Science, Psychology, Documentary, True Crime

Other:
Roleplaying Game Source Book

Nope, I don’t record books I didn’t finish.

Now, see, I’ve got an IQ of 138, but I’ve rarely run across a book whose writing I found “bad” enough to quit reading. There may be a couple reasons for this. One, I’ve never taken a writing class to learn how to tell the difference between good and bad writing, so I guess I just judge a book on whether or not I find it entertaining. Two, I tend to stay away from the bestseller lists (still haven’t read The DaVinci Code). I typically find an author who entertains me, and read everything by that author I can get my hands on. Thus, I’ve read forty-six Asimov books, for example.

42

Incidentally, as I keep seeing this thread title appear in Cafe Society–and as I keep rotating through several books I’m reading right now, it occurs to me that I need to make a distinction between books that I’m “really not enjoying” and books I’m “not really enjoying”.

Books in the first category I don’t bother trying to keep reading. Books in the second category, I take breaks on but keep reading.

I read a lot of romance. It is not unusual for a romance novel to have a moment midway through where I want to shake either the hero or the heroine (or both) and make them communicate with each other. (Look, you’re in love with someone who is in love with you. But you are both scared to say it first. Don’t waste 50 more pages with agony alternating with hope–tell the other person).

Or sometimes it’s the author I want to shake. I like Chris Crutcher novels, even if they aren’t in one of my usual genres, but he has a way of having 16 seriously bad things befall the hero and his friends in the same book. Sometimes I get tired of reading about bad things happening.

I also read a lot of romantic suspense or mystery novels. When I read mysteries, I often find hints of a relationship, but they are often drawn out painfully slowly compared to romantic suspense novels, where the mystery must be solved and the couple find true love by the end of the book. Sometimes I lose patience there as well.

And sometimes I’ll start a book with somewhat of a goal to broaden my usual reading horizens. When I do that, if the book is not entirely to my taste, but not exactly horrid either, I’ll keep reading for a while-- and usually at some point find I’m at the point of needing to know what happens.

Or I’ll start a book that’s by an author that I usually like, and keep reading it for the bits of that author that I usually enjoy. In such a case, I usually try to make a mental note that Book X wasn’t as enjoyable as most of the stuff by the author, so that I can think two or three times before I pick up the next book by the author.

43

The last time I read a book that I didn’t really like that much was Wheel of Time 8: Path of Daggers. I liked the first book a lot, but it was all downhill from there. It took 8 books for the glacial plot pacing to outweigh the shrinking number of interesting moments.

These days, I’ll tend to read books recommended by people who have read and liked the same sorts of books as me. If I’m at the bookstore or library, I’ll randomly read a few passages to see if it looks interesting enough to get.

It’s probably just not your thing. My wife is into a lot of British mystery novels. I’m not going to say that they suck, but they don’t really do it for me either.

Alternatively, you just have no taste. :wink:

44

Right now I’m 50 pages from the end of a 350 page novel Intoxicated.
It was rather slow starting -maybe 25-50 pages in I was specifically thinking about this thread and considering putting it down. Around page 100 or so it took a couple of turns such that I became quite engaged, and am glad I stuck with it. Eager to see what happens in the last 50 pages or so.

45

I give up about two pages after I realize things have gone sour.

46

On the other hand I have also stuck out a few marginal books until the climax and then quit in disgust before the denouement or epilogue.

47

I’ll usually make myself finish the thing. Under the Volcano didn’t interest me, and then a year after I started it, I picked it up again… and it still didn’t interest me. But I finished the damn thing. An American Tragedy started getting good after 500 or 550 pages, so it wasn’t really worth it- but at least I got to finish with the interesting part.

48

I too used to read everything I started from cover to cover. Now with non-fiction material if it is too arid I will just skim it and try to find some passages of interest. With a novel, if I don’t like the writer’s style in the first 10 or 15 pages I usually open at another couple of random spots and if they are similar I chuck it. It really only happens with books I am given, whenever I buy a book or borrow one from the library I read a few random pages to make sure I enjoy the author’s writing.

The OP mentions hoping that bad books would get better but generally books and movies don’t get better as they go on, even the ones we like.