I don’t think there’s any shame in abandoning a book that really isn’t very good. I got about a quarter of the way through Ken Jennings’ Planet Funny before setting it aside with no intention of ever picking it up again. KJ may be the only man on earth who can write a book about humor that isn’t the least bit funny.
More often, if there’s a book I’m not enjoying, I’ll set it aside with the intention of reading it later. Most of the time I never seem to get back to it. This class includes The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley. I wanted to like it because I’ve enjoyed other books by the same author and have a fascination with medieval Greenland. But keeping track of who all the characters are and how they relate to each other was starting to feel like more work than it was worth. I may still finish it eventually, but I’ll never enjoy it was much as I expected to.
If I get about half done with a book before I realize it’s not very good, I try to plow through and finish it. A recent example was Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington. The beginning was good enough to keep me reading, but the middle and end were disappointing. At least now I know why Tarkington’s reputation has declined from the days when he was considered the next Mark Twain. What I can’t quite understand is why he was ever considered a successor to Twain in the first place. I guess Tarkington was a product of his times, with all the prejudices, assumptions, and conventions that implies. Twain is more nearly timeless.
Sometimes switching formats helps. For some reason I find Dickens’ verbosity is a lot easier to take in audiobook format (typically at about 2x playback speed) than on the printed page. Other readers may well feel the contrary is true.
I’m surprised that you didn’t make it through this book. Yes, King can be more than a bit verbose at times, but I thought this was a decent book, one that held my interest from start to finish. I have several friends that liked this book as well.
Me, too. Moby Dick is one of those books, in my mind, that you must have finished to consider yourself well-read. I actually enjoy that style of writing, but for some reason I couldn’t get through it. I will come back to it.
The Portrait of a Lady by James is one I will not be trying again. I’ve started it twice, once getting about 150 pages into it. And while I found the prose enjoyable, absolutely nothing ever happens. Okay, I exaggerate, but only slightly. It’s a novel of wealthy people talking and navel gazing. They bounce around Europe to continue the various conversations, but I was very impatient for something—hell, anything—to happen. I don’t need explosions or car crashes, but somebody drop a plate, for Christ’s sake.
I realize a novel of this reputation doesn’t require my approval. I fully accept it’s my own shortcoming. But I still ain’t ever trying again.
I’m currently working through Little Dorrit, which is surprisingly a bit of a slog (I love Dickens). I think it may be because the title character is so saintly, so virtuous, so selfless, that I want to slap her. Dickens often has deliberately cartoonish characters, but not usually the title one. But I will get through this one.
I mention these because they’re the exceptions—I can’t otherwise recall ever abandoning or struggling to finish a book. I’m a finisher, I guess. I love adding books into my mental “Done!” archive.
I really like early King, but this one really annoyed me. His writing seem so amateurish to me.
Here is my imitation of his writing style in that book:
He slipped into his Nikes, strapped his Timex on his wrist, and donned his North Face jacket as he headed outside to attempt to start his Toro mower that was filled with last-year’s Shell gasoline.
I’d say I quit reading about one book in three that I start. These days, I mostly borrow books from the library or download them through my library to my Kindle, so there’s no money invested in them. The main reason that I quit reading books is that they are too boring. When this happens, my mind starts wandering, and I no longer can keep track of the plot, so there is no point in finishing. One exception: Shari Lapena’s A Stranger in the House. I’d already read a couple of her other books, and this one was exactly like those other two. Throw together a crime or disappearance, unreliable narrators, and marriage infidelities. I quit about three quarters of the way into the book. I don’t need to read the same book thrice.
She does long for Rochester, but she refuses to compromise her values for him, and I think that’s a good message. I read that one for the first time just a few years ago and couldn’t put it down.
I used to track how many books I read consciously but I don’t any more. It’s not a competition. I either want to read or I don’t.
I finished it, but it was just another “chase” novel, of which he has too many already. I did like the President Hilary Clinton bit and the way the world was shaking itself apart due to time paradoxes, but too little, too late.
I could not finish, “Under the Dome,” it was unpleasant. I enjoyed The Simpsons Movie a lot due to all the “UtD” references, so at least there’s that.
Slight nitpick: “11/22/63” is the actual title of the Kennedy book.
Likewise. Until I was in my 30s, maybe 40s, when reading a book meant reading a physical book, I read 100 to 150 books a year. Originally I read every word of everything that I started. At some point I realized that books, like movies and albums seldom get better as you continue through them. So I learned how to skim novels if I was only completing them to find how the story continued - read the dialogue and the first sentence of each paragraph. Eventually I realized that I will not live forever and began my current regime of giving up on things very promptly. Twenty or thirty pages of a book, 20 odd minutes of a movie or a couple of episodes of a TV show is enough. There are far more great entertainments around than I could ever enjoy in my lifetime so why persist with something just because other people insist it is great.
I used to feel guilty about not finishing a book, till I realized I was wasting what dwindling lifetime I have left to struggle through something that’s not worth the effort. Very glad to see I’m far from alone in this.
One of my most frequently re-read books. In grade school, I read it several times just because it was the fattest book in the library. Took it with me on my honeymoon.
Thought of another recent DNF - Rabbit Run by Updike. Just felt it was a gap in my reading. But it was just a sordid story about a very nasty person. Not worth my time.
Now you tell me. I recently bought this one to address the serious Updike gap in my library. Also bought his short stories, which I started (and am enjoying).
9th grade is what, age 14? I was assigned Jane Eyre at age 11 (first year of grammar (high) school in the UK. Got half way through, to the point where she leaves Thornfield and meets her relatives. Gave up at that point, they were just so dull and preachy.
I did enjoy the book more than most Stephen King (I prefer his novellas that became “The Shawshank Redemption” and “Stand by Me” to his standard horror fare).
Nevertheless, 11/22/63 was desperately in need of a good editor. The book had way too much fat that could have been trimmed out without affecting the quality of the story. Perhaps it is best that you never finished the book, as the ending was amateurish, rushed, and sloppy (IMHO).
Your imitation gave me a laugh because it seems more descriptive of the Jack Carr books that I tried to like. It is a distracting style–naming brands of every object in use to illustrate how elite/special the protagonist is.