We’ve all been there. Perhaps you were drawn in by a beautiful cover, hooked by the summary on the back of a paperback, or intrigued by the way a book was being discussed on Twitter. You read a great review; your favorite author was raving about a book; your group chat wouldn’t shut up about a twist. So you started the book. And you knew, whether immediately or 50 pages in, that it wasn’t for you.
A certain stripe of book prescriptivist would hold that you have to finish the book. “To give an author just 20 pages of your time is insulting,” wrote Rupert Hawksley in The Independent recently. Authors, for the most part, seemed indifferent to Hawksley’s defense of their honor. (Quoth John Scalzi: “Lol, no.”) But this idea persists, this notion that once you pick up a book you are locked in, never give up, never surrender!
Please. Please just put down the book.
There is a very simple reason why you shouldn’t force yourself to finish books, and it’s this: Life is short. Would you like to do the math on how many books you can read in your lifetime? Personally, I would not. Some things should be a mystery. But if you want to know, there’s a chart for that.
There’s another simple, valid reason, too: There are so many other books you could read. In a review of Mark McGurl’s Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon (a book I will almost certainly never read), Parul Sehgal wrote, “In 2018, some 1.6 million books were reportedly self-published—all this on top of the tens of thousands released by traditional publishing houses.”
This does not take into account all the fanfic one might read, all the book reviews one might read in place of reading a specific book, and how many other things there are to peruse instead: pages and pages of comics, essays, magazines, liner notes, letters, emails, newsletters, the classic “back of the cereal box.” I saved Sehgal’s review into Instapaper to read when I had the attention span—and where, had I not read it this morning, it might have lingered indefinitely, sharing space with the extremely in-depth reviews of Battlestar Galactica episodes that I saved a decade ago. I still believe I will read those someday.
I also believe I will read the hundreds of books on my unread-books shelf, and the hundreds more books I will buy in the next decade, and the decade after that. To be a reader is to be forever hopeful—that you’ll have time for everything; that every book you pick up will delight and surprise and challenge you; that stories will always find a new way to tell you about lives strange and familiar, worlds close and right at hand.
Last month I read Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, a book which is as distressing as it is hopeful and practical. Four thousand weeks is the average duration of a life. It sounds like nothing, phrased this way. It makes me both want to count how many weeks I’ve used up, and to run screaming from the thought. It makes me want to quit social media and give up watching all but my most favorite TV shows in favor of spending all my time reading and writing. Four thousand weeks is not enough. It could never be enough. There are so many things to do.
Burkeman has many wise things to say about the brevity of the time available to each of us, and about how we use it—how we choose to use it. “It’s a fact of life that, as a finite human, you’re always making hard choices,” he writes. But making a choice isn’t a defeat, or a rejection of the things you didn’t choose. “It’s a positive commitment to spend a given portion of time doing this instead of that—actually, instead of an infinite number of other ‘thats’—because this, you’ve decided, is what counts the most right now.”
Books that aren’t working for you are “thats” you can let go of in favor of choosing something else to spend your extremely limited time reading. Books take hours to read. They require focus and attention—things in short and difficult supply these days. They require commitment. And you simply don’t need to commit to every single book that passes your initial sniff test. There are so many things to read. There are so many things to try and then set aside. Do you watch every TV show you stumble on whilst flipping through cable, every episode that starts to auto-play when you’re paging through Netflix? No. Why should books be any different?
I’ve given up on books for so many reasons. The book described as a writing craft book that was more of a memoir, and therefore not what I was in the mood for. The sweet meet-cute novel that was just too twee for my heart at that moment in time. The fourth book in a series that had lost its shine.
The reason is almost never that a book was too challenging. This is a frequent argument trotted out by the book-finishing brigade: If people can just quit books whenever they want, they will never read anything that challenges them! They will simply stick with what’s easy and familiar.
To me, the opposite seems true. If there is some rule insisting that every reader finish every book they start, isn’t each reader more likely to stick to their own personal tried and true, knowing there’s no escape once the first pages are turned?
But also: I think readers know the difference. We know when we’re putting down a book because it’s just not the right moment, or we’re not the right reader, versus when we’re tempted to put down a book because it’s formally challenging or the content is emotionally exhausting or we’re having to do a lot more critical thinking than we expected. Sometimes you still set aside the smart, hard, necessary books. Not everyone is in the right place for something heavy and difficult all the time. But those are also the books we remember, and maybe go back to.
I keep a list of unfinished books alongside my list of what I’ve read in a given year. I know which books I just couldn’t do at the time, but still want to find my way into. Don’t we all have those? I wanted so much to read Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, but trying to read it one November—a month always shadowed by the years-past death of my stepfather—was a crucial mistake. I’ll get to it, though. Someday.
No book is for every reader. The only “should” in reading is that we should read widely, diversely, enthusiastically. Beyond that, to quote Burkeman once more: “Choose uncomfortable enlargement over comfortable diminishment whenever you can.”
There is so much to read, to learn, to understand. But there is also, as Ursula Vernon put it, “a whole lotta…just…life…that comes between people and books.”
Let the life come. The books will still be there.
Molly Templeton lives and writes in Oregon, and spends as much time as possible in the woods. Sometimes she talks about books on Twitter.
I must admit I definitely tend to lock myself into finishing a book – regardless of whether I’m enjoying it. Fortunately it’s rarely been a significant issue. The only book I specifically recall not finishing was Neverness by David Zindell as a teen. I went back a couple decades later and finished it – and the subsequent trilogy.
Nancy Pearl, the famous ‘if one city read the same book’ librarian, has a rule: Give a book 50 pages. If it’s not working for you by then, it’s unlikely to change your mind about it later. There’s a corollary: Since life is short, for every year you are over the age of 50, you remove one page from the total. So if you’re 60, you only have to read 40 pages. If 90, only 10 (because how many books will you be able to get through after you’re 90?)
I admit I don’t slavishly follow her rule, but I have it in mind, and at some point before the halfway mark I sometimes say “I’m invoking the Nancy Pearl rule on this” and move to the next book.
It took me years to get over not finishing every book, but, these days, I tend to be too quick to put down a book. It doesn’t help that my education and professional jobs was taking apart books so I have a dang harsh critic in my head. Some really, really bad books keep me glued to them, though. I can’t resist a writing train wreck, and they give me so many ideas for my writing blog.
“If there is some rule insisting that every reader finish every book they start, isn’t each reader more likely to stick to their own personal tried and true, knowing there’s no escape once the first pages are turned?”
Yes. This, exactly this, is why I stopped insisting I finish each book I started. I was fifteen…my reading broadened immeasurably! Ulysses and The Tale of Genji and As I Lay Dying all took several attempts but WOW what gifts they gave when I was through.
And all because I Just Said No (to Prescriptivism).
I don’t have the brain space, the focus, or the energy to read every single book to the end, esp. if it’s a main character that I loath, it’s written in present, not past tense, is boring, or makes me mad enough to wall-thump it. Just as the author doesn’t owe the audience, the audience does not owe the author, esp. if the author is getting their money for our partially read book.
Good post!
The only time I’ve made myself finish a book (James’ Portrait of a Lady) is for class, but there was one time I did not finish a book even for class (Moby Dick and no one else in class finished it either).
I’ve never understood finishing a book you’re not enjoying. If you had a plate of food in front of you that you didn’t like, would you eat the whole thing? (Unless you’re six and your mother is standing over you, of course…) I’ll be saving this article (with the detailed reviews of Star Trek Voyager I know I’ll read one day), so that I can flourish it under the nose of the next Never-DNF I come across.
Had a friend in College who claimed the only book he ever began that he never finished was The Gulag Archipelago. I was always the opposite. Starting books doesn’t imply an obligation to finish them, for me. They get their chance to entice me in the opening chapters. If they fail, I feel little compunction about moving on to the next one. I’ve undoubtedly missed a few great books this way, but spared myself many more bad or mediocre ones. On the balance, I think it’s a superior system.
@2 Dan in Seattle, bet you shop at Magus!
-Skallagrimsen in Seattle
Honestly, I have never heard any sort of logical argument behind the “you must finish” rule. It’s just proffered as fact, as if it were some sort of law. And it’s such a bizarre idea! Where do people come up with this stuff?
The next time someone suggests that you (or they) have to finish a book, just because it’s been started, ask, “why?” and see what sort of response you get. (In my experience, a lot of sputtering, a lot of indignation, and, once in a rare while, a look of dawning realization! That last makes putting up with the sputtering and indignation all worth it.)
I see you are talking of me ;)
So saith also the Common Reader (Virginia Woolf), in “How to read a novel”. And she was right. There’s too little time to spend on books that don’t work for me.
@@.-@
indeed yes! The Tale of Genji is stil on my TBR pile. Someday …
HERESY!
;<)
@9 Skallgrimsen: Indeed, I have shopped at Magus, the wonderfully packed used bookstore near the iconic University Bookstore. I’ve even sold books to Magus…perhaps some of those books I invoked the ‘Nancy Pearl rule’ on.
Shadow of the Torturer. Put it down mid-way through book 3. Maybe next decade.
@14, best used bookstore in Seattle! Happy to encounter a fan on this thread. I’ve been buying books there for over 25 years. Still has a great sf section, though my taste has long since inclined to history and philosophy.
I used to finish every book I start but in recent years I’ve begun to DNF books. I’ve always had books that I set aside in the middle of reading, but I always used to expect to come back to it and now I still have those cases but now I also have books that I put down and consciously decide not to come back to. The DNF books are still in the minority, I usually finish or plan to come back but some in the plan-to-come-back-to pile have been there for years and might stay there indefinitely.
@15; Funnily enough, I’m currently reading Gene Wolfe’s “The Fifth Head of Cerberus”, which I failed to make it through on my first attempt. That was over 45 years ago, when I was in my early teens, and I can certainly see why I simply didn’t get it back then. This time though I’m greatly enjoying it. I’ve done the same thing several times in recent years, returning to books that had defeated me decades previously; sometimes they still don’t appeal to me, but often I’ve realised that, for one reason or another, I simply wasn’t ready for that book first time around.
Good advice! May I also consider, for those who suffer from the sunken cost fallacy of a book that they’re over halfway through: try skim reading!
Related question: how does re-reading factor into some of this? I found more enjoyment from re-reading something I know I’ll like when I don’t feel like getting out of my comfort zone than I care to admit. But is it a waste of time when the Next Good Book could be out there waiting for me?
¨There is a special case. Many books are written to please both the critic and the reader. Specifically, the first two or three chapters are written to please the critic, and the rest of the book to please the reader.
This can be a problem especially in school, where pupils and students are given excerpts of texts to read. It seems that often the excerpt is the first chapter or so, the part of the text written to please the critic, and so the pupils are not interested.
If you are not a pupil, skimming might be a good thing to try (as for instance nr 19 Nik the heratic suggested).
cheers/Rolf
Who came up with this “must finish” rule? I’m 66 and I only became aware of it in the last decade. Fortunately, it had never occurred to me that there might be something wrong with stopping when I was done (whether the author was or not).
Maybe it’s because I mostly read library books (no sunk $$$, just sunk time).
I read a lot more non-fiction these days. In a well-written book, the author usually clarifies the main point in the first chapter, and then I find I’m not that interested in all the evidence and arguments.
I also stop about 30 pages into many, many novels. I’ve been trying to broaden my interests, so I try a lot of books outside my sweet spot. But 30 pages is enough to tell whether I’m feeling stretchy. Found some real great stuff, though!
I wouldn’t tell anyone else how to read, but personally I can’t remember the last time I didn’t finish a book I’d started. I think that’s mostly because I can blitz through a standard sized novel in just a few days, so it doesn’t feel like much of a cost if I’m not enjoying it.
I am quite happy to bail on a series of books if I didn’t enjoy the first one though.
If you get to say, 50 pages and still do not feel any empathy with the characters in the story, or the story line itself, then it is probably time to call it a day (and write off the investment in time and money).
Ditto for series that never, as far as I am concerned, seem to end, I remember one series by Elizabeth Moon that just went on and on and I lost interest in both the characters or story line. (For me) It is time to stop. It is the same for many other authors – I read Joel Shepard’s Spiral series, started well but after 5 or 6 books, with no end in sight, and the stories meander on and on. I gave up.
I found the amazon kindle samples good in that if you get to the end of a sample, you’ll have a pretty good idea whether you’d like a book or not. Online libraries are also good places to find out whether you want to read (and keep) the story.
This used to be a huge problem for me, especially with books by authors I already enjoyed or who had a lot of critical acclaim. For instance I’d find myself slogging thru the latest James P Hogan novel, not really enjoying it, and writing notes in the margin about how this is the Danchekker character for this book, here’s the graduate-symposium scene where a young character questions the glib little explanations that the authority-figure character insists be accepted at face value, etc.
Finally I had to just accept the fact that one of my favorite sf authors was writing the exact same novel over and over again, and that freed up a huge chunk of my time and budget.
I’ve also struggled with the DNF problem with award-winning stories and a lot of the old classics. Hey, if it has THAT much acclaim then I should be enjoying it, and if I’m bouncing off it then that’s a failure on MY part, right?
Finally out of sheer lack of time I decided, nah. Not for me, don’t worry about not “getting it” and try something else.
@12, Msb, regarding The Tale of Genji, may I strongly recommend the Waley translation for your first attempt? It is I think the most accessible for English speakers with little or no knowledge of Heian Japan. After Waley has introduced you so to speak, you may well want to do a bit of background research and move on to more recent and literal translations. I did.
I finish the vast majority of what I start. That said, I remember getting about halfway through A Game of Thrones and throwing it away because it was such a bad riff on Tolkien + War of the Roses. Bleah. Didn’t like it any better on TV either.
Three books I gave up on, in over fifty-five years of reading.
The first was a SF(Fantasy?) tale of a man traveling cross country and stopping off to visit his brother who had been possessed by a very weird bird that perched at the foot of his bed. Never went anywhere or did anything before or after that scene so I just…quit. Wonder to this day what the name/author of this turgid tome was so I can hate it even more.
Another was Wuthering Heights, for a college class. Halfway through I couldn’t stand it anymore, decided it was a story of two horrible people tearing each other apart (an opinion echoed by many others over the years), and went out and bought the Cliff Notes summary. Got an ‘A’ on my essay so I guess you could say I bought the grade…
The third book? DUNE. Yes, I happily accept the wrath of the SF/F community for but I don’t care. Two dozen main characters, fifty minors and innumerable walk-ons not to mention five or six planets: at Paul looking up at the Arrakian moons and wondering if he should just give up I gave up instead. Slow, boring and pointless: all the world’s fanboyz and their glowing reviews couldn’t make me care a whit about these dull characters and silly conflicts. Had to wait until the Lynch movie to see how it all ended. I consider this the ‘Cliff Notes’ version and was ever so happy I didn’t have to slog through the rest.
What is this strange urge for writers to crank out a ‘War and Peace’ or ‘Lord of the Rings’ especially as they reach a certain age? Herbert was an excellent writer, easily surpassing Bronte and that other hack but…why? Maybe G.R.R. Martin can explain it better but I doubt it.
ENGAGE your readers, dammit: show them a good time! Especially here in the Age of Distractions. Massive world building and masses of characters for the sake of mass page counts do not a tight, engrossing story make. Grab us by the ears, make us care!
I guess I do a pretty good job of picking the books to read, plus I’m a fast reader. I can only think of one book I started as an adult and didn’t finish and that was The 120 Days of Sodom, by the Marquis de Sade. I have Finnegan’s Wake, but haven’t attempted it yet. Now, as a child there were a number of books in my parents’ library that I started but couldn’t finish – can’t recollect any titles.
When I was a child we kept one of those huge collections of literature series in the top of the Hall closet. When I wanted something to read I climbed up on a chair and picked a volume. I remember being completely unable to get into Welles’ The Time Machine, no idea why. It wasn’t the 19th century prose, I could handle Dumas and Haggard just fine.
@27, Mazdin, personally I adore complex world building and am happy to take a few pages off from the plot to hear about CHOAM or how still suits are made, but that’s an idiosyncratic taste.
18: Because I am rereading the whole of the Orbit anthology series, I recently discovered I have been confusing The Fifth Head of Cerberus with A Funeral For The Eyes of Fire for approximately 40 years.
@@@@@ 29 princessroxana, as an ex-mechanic and lay engineer I LOVE to read the world building and techno details! (Give me Ringworld or give me death…) It’s just that story, plot and character development should be the main priority of the writer. Even Niven got better at that as time went on.
And Dune failed that for me. Great world building: check. Fantastic places: check. A complex and deep plot: check, although it became TOO complex for my tastes. But I just couldn’t make myself care for the characters, didn’t care if they lived or died. Maybe it was the sheer amount of them (the ‘War and Peace Syndrome’?). If you cut out half of the characters I wonder if that would improve the remaining. The author would certainly have more time for them.
Again, just my take on the book.
I can’t argue about the general unlikeability of Dune’s cast. It’s a very dark universe with pretty much no moral center but lots of strange customs and secretive organizations to appeal to my inner anthropologist. The Bene Gesserit for example are totally horrible but fascinating, IMO.
The style of Dune is unreadably dull. Maybe the problem is the German translation, but I don’t care enough to try if it is more readable in English. I somehow got through it as a child (when I hadn’t yet learned to just stop reading a bad book), but when I tried to reread it later to see if it is really so bad I soon gave up.
@33 – mileage varies. I love Dune – my favorite sci-fi book. Multilayered, thoughtful, powerful, not dull at all. I just don’t like the ensuing books very much.
Mileage does vary, but I must admit that I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what’s going on in Dune for literally decades of rereads.
Count me as another one who rarely fails to finish a book I’ve bought. Like Pat above (#28) it’s probably because I am fairly discerning about what I actually put money down for. In the rare cases I start to get bored I “skim read”.
However, when I’m reading for the Hugos – which often means I’m cramming in a bunch of books close to the voting deadline – I will stop mid-book if it’s clear there’s no way the work in question will be ranked anywhere near the top of my ballot.
I have no problem putting books down. For example, I just can’t get into Susanna Clarke’s very popular novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Twice I’ve tried to read that book and both times I gave up about a third of the way in. It just didn’t hook me.
@@@@@ #6: I will never understand the antipathy so many have for Moby Dick. I loved every word of it, including the lengthy discurses on the arts and sciences of whaling.
Of course, I’m aspy, & thus totally used to hyperfocusing for hrs & hrs on minutiae…
Perhaps that has something to do with it.
Don’t listen to these people! You have to finish every book you start. You don’t want to end up in that special purgatory of souls who haven’t finished reading all their books do you, for all eternity?!
@19, Nik – Yes! I would rather read a favorite book again – and again – than struggle to finish one that bores me to tears.
I’ve just started to end books that don’t hold my interest, and after at least 65 years of reading, it’s quite liberating!
‘You don’t have to eat a whole egg to know its rotten’. George Bernard Shaw. Loved Dune, Loved Neverness and the following trilogy. Hate Wuthering Heights and finished it. Also despise Gatsby. Finished it twice just to ensure my hatred was valid. Almost always finish a book I start because I’m fairly certain it’s time well spent before purchasing it or checking it out of the library.
so many comments! I love the passion around reading, but did anyone mention how much actual unreadable crap gets into print. At one time, I was a finish-the-book-type reader. When I turned 50, I stopped that. I read for many reasons. Some of those reasons are education, information, entertainment, emotional connection, and escape. I don’t read bad writing. I finally made peace with knowing a good book is uncommon and a great book is few and far between.
It strikes me as a bit of a non-problem. Those who want to finish books will finish them. Those who don’t – well it’s not like some crack authorial SWAT team will break your door down shouting to adopt the reading position NOW! What I would say though, given some of the comments above is that just because you don’t want to finish it doesn’t necessarily make it a bad book
Funny how this posts the day after I decide not finish a book I started yesterday, I can release my self imposed guilt.
I love the bragging by those who rarely DNF a book. You might think it’s because you are ever so discerning; forgive me if I suspect it’s because you never stray off a strict path – or your standards are lower.
I’ve started many a book in hopes of something fresh and new and different, and been bitterly disappointed. But I’ve also found some of my favorite books by taking a flyer. I’ve also been bitterly disappointed by books that should have been exactly like what I have read and enjoyed before, but were so badly written I wanted to burn them. (Mine is one of the top reviews of “A Beautiful Blue Death”, which had a gorgeous cover and a great synopsis, and was among the worst books I’ve ever read.)
I have also tended to abandon more books in recent years, since my TBR pile is going to outlive me by decades.
I have tried to read two different Thomas Pynchon books, but they just started to feel like a slog and I gave up.
I loved Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, but gave up on his Baroque Cycle about half way through because it seemed to be going nowhere and taking too long to get there, and I just didn’t care about the characters.
I gave up on GRR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire in the middle of the second book because there were just too many characters and plot threads for my feeble mind to keep up with.
@38 Austin: I did finish reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell . . . but it was really slow. Really, really slow. There’s this whole massive stretch between the beginning and almost the end where nothing bloody happens. I only managed to get through the whole thing because I’m a sucker for the period atmosphere, but if you’re wondering if you maybe made a mistake and dropped it just before the pace would have picked up . . . nah.
I imposed the must finish rule as a child. No idea why. Took me twenty years to dump it. Thank heaven, because the idea of finishing most of the USA Today best sellers makes me twitch in terror. This way I can start a book that’s on it without fear. The 50 page is is generally good BUT, BUT, BUT extreme caution required in the application. There is one huge exception. There are amazing beyond wonderful storytellers who don’t know how to start the tale.
A good example is Julian May’s opening, for me at least, seven volumes of pure pleasure, The Pliocene Epoch. The setup chapters seemed a clumsy melange of tropes, cliched characters, and poorly paced paragraphs. What comes later is more than worth waiting for.
I couldn’t read the preface to the first Wheel of Time novel with a gun to my head. I’ve heard it gets better. Someday I’ll find out.
I have a copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with margin notes by one of Tolkein’s students. The best one is advise from the professor. If you don’t like the songs and poems in The Rings, just skip them. It was a great relief. I’d been skipping them every year or so for at least 30 years.
#40
Yes! I am certain Dante mentioned that place… :>)
Now…how about this…I’ve started a book, read it halfway through, kind of liked it but, it just wasn’t working for me. Put it down on the shelf. Then…I stumbled across it on my shelves later. Picked it back up and give it another try. And…behold! This time it just finally works. I love it when the author goes back and re-writes those books while I was away and gets it so much better that second time…
:>)
“Dhalgren.” That was the breaking point for me. 450+ page paperback, and I had lost any caring about any of the characters about 150 pages in but kept trying to finish it. I’ve finished many thousands of others.
I just returned a book to the library I only read about a third of. There was a long queue of people waiting for it and while I did enjoy the beginning of the book to some extent, I found myself not caring at all about the characters and figured I should just let the next library patron in the queue have it.
I am a voracious reader and enjoy a multitude of genres, both fiction and nonfiction. If I don’t enjoy it I put it down. If poor editing and copywriting are annoying me I put it down. I read for my enjoyment and there are thousands more books I can love … so why waste my time?
Would recommend you do repick up H is for Hawk. I read it during an eco-fem class and although not what I’d classify as a “favourite” book, there was something gripping and enticing about it. Would also suggest September as an appropriate month to read it in.
I’ve gotten a lot better lately at just…putting the book down. For whatever reason it might be. If I’m not enjoying it, it’s not worth it. Or maybe it’s just too much. I’ve also gotten into the habit of putting something down to pick it back up (Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey has been an eight month journey and at one point I felt embarrassed that it’s taken me so long. I’ve absolutely gotten over that now and will finish it when I finish it.)
Some books take longer to get up to speed than others. Until goaded by a friend whose taste I trust I kept stopping about 100 pages into Richard Powers’ Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance. After 120 I was hooked. Now I know to just let the story build up and I won’t be disappointed. The great reads I would have missed out on if I hadn’t stuck with that first book!
Not to say I haven’t stopped reading other books for a variety of reasons, but no I try to see what structure the author is trying to build.
As an extension of this, I recently decided that it’s OK to buy a book to support an author or promote a genre and never read it at all. Sometimes I hold them for a while, sometimes I donate them on. I don’t have to read them.
I used to give a book 100 pages to grab me until I realized that I won’t live long enough to read everything that I want to, so I decreased it to 50 pages. Now at age 77, I’ve changed it to 30. If my wife and I are watching a movie on TV and she’s ready to change the channel, she’ll ask me, “Have you reached page 30 yet?” The only way I’ll continue to read a slow book past page 30 is if someone I trust tells me that the book has a slow start but it gets really better after page 50.
I came to this a few years back as I slogged through a perfectly dreadful Kindle freebie.
Now I classify the books. If I stopped reading them because they weren’t my cup of tea, they go in the “Meh” collection. Books that I am just not in the mood for that will probably be fine later just stay there.
If I care enough to buy a physical book, I always finish it.
I’ve been waffling over whether to dump a book I started recently, because it’s not grabbing me — BUT it was a giveaway! I’m obligated! and — BUT! the book jacket is covered with glowing reviews! It must be better than I think it is! But now I think I’ll definitely move on to something else. I have no compunctions about dumping Kindle books I’ve only started (I give them 10% of the book at most), since they’re not physical objects. And now that I have a Little Free Library, I feel less guilty about dumping physical books too. Somebody will want them eventually, even though I don’t.
When I was in high school/college and really trying to define my identity I took this to an extreme – not only did I have to finish a book, I felt committed to finish an entire series, including any ancillary/extra works. My TBR list soon became VERY overwhelming. I also found myself slogging through books I didn’t even really look forward to that much.
I still generally will finish a book but I’ve given myself way more grace on the series aspect, haha.