What does it take for you to finish a book that you've started? The past two books that I have read have sucked me in easily enough and when that happens, it doesn't take much prodding to take the book to completion.
On the other hand, the book that I'm currently reading (Case Histories by Kate Atkinson) has turned out to be quite good here at the halfway point, but I really had to struggle at the beginning. It made sense once things got going, but the beginning of this book seemed to be just a series of stories told one after another.
The main reason that I kept going was because of the recommendations for it. I'm glad that I kept going, because it has been very rewarding so far. However, I'm not sure what the difference is between this book and others that I've started and never finished.
I've had similar situations with other books that have come on strong recommendations (I'm looking at you A Confederacy of Dunces) that I've enjoyed, but for some reason could never finish. Other books (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell) sound like an awesome idea, but the writing style was just so boring that after 100 pages of slogging, I just quit.
At what point should I give up? I know that at some point I'll have to go back and finish Dunces, but that's because I liked it enough. Should I give a book all the way until the ending before I decide that it wasted a week of my life, or can I decide at the point that I can barely finish a page before falling asleep?
The sad thing is, I know how much better written the abovementioned books are than say... Twilight, but at least the Twilight series was able to suck me in (pun intended).
3 comments:
I don't waste my time on books that bore me unless I'm reading them to learn something. And in those cases, I just keep a couple of books going so I can take the less exciting book at a slower pace. I try to read at least 60-100 pages (depending on the size of the book) before I give it a final judgment.
I'm a victim of Confederacy of Dunces too. I got about 60 or so pages in and enjoyed what I was reading, but not enough to continue. It's sitting at home on my to-read shelf. As for Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, I wouldn't recommend picking it back up. I finished it, but it was a struggle and now I can't remember enough of the plot or numerous subplot to justify spending all that time reading it.
As for why I sometimes give up on a book: I think for me it has as much to do with the book as it does with how I'm feeling at the time. Sometimes books are the victims of exterior circumstances.
i could easily count the number of books i've just completely given up on on one hand, even if i was an accident prone butcher and was missing a couple fingers. I don't know why, but i just have to see it through. My best guess is that i give it hte benefit of the doubt and assume it's going to get better, or they've dug themselves in such a ridiculous plot hole, i can't even envison how they're getting out of it. of course in the latter situation i'm usually just annoyed by the fact that they had no answer either and instead had to turn to some absurd deus ex machina sort of ending and i throw the book across the room (too bad i couldn't do that with battlestar's series finale, but i digress).
I'm inthe process of trying to clean out my book shelves of books i don't really want to read so i've been alternating them with terry pratchett, foundation series, or another book ireally am excited about so that i get through them because i know hwne i finish them i get to read something awesome. that's mostly what keeps me going.
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