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I give up!

W

Wabbit

New Member
Hi

I was reading "Sign For The Sacred," by Storm Constantine, and I give up! :)

I just can't get into this book. Some of it is interesting. It's well written... but just...

I'm about page 180ish. Normally I give a book at least 100 pages before I feel that it's wasting my time.

How long do you all go into a book before you decide it's no good? Or maybe you don't stop and keep going?

Regards
SillyWabbit
 
Normally 100-200 pages, though I rarely don't finish a novel. Sometimes I just get too bored and when I am not reading just to avoid the novel, I know its time to put it down. Sometimes I'll mark the place and go back in a month or two to see if it was just me or if its the novel.
 
i always strive to finish any book that i read though there are a couple of exceptions
"The Summons" by Grisham : it was hopeless
some book by John Le Carre : his writing style was too much to digest
it really irritates me if there are any books half read
 
2 exceptions, otherwise I always try to finish:

The Simarrillion
The Diary of Alice B. Toklas

I am a pretty fast reader, but if the novel is really not very good I might skim a bit.
 
Usually, if I like the first ten pages, I'm in for the duration . . . um, well. Except for my occasional bad habit of getting distracted mid-book by a different book and then forgetting to go back to the first book!
 
It's not so much as give up as I can read almost anything but it's factors external to the book that make me discard it; not my problem as a reader but that of the author for not successfully capturing my attention.
 
I also nearly always finish books i start, but there have been some notable exceptions!!

The Silmarillion by Tolkien (same as Ashley) - can anyone say information overload?? Ive tried several times to get through it, but i end up just reading sections because otherwise my head gets so filled up with names and places that it all blurs and i cant work out who is who anymore!!

The Iliad by Homer - tried to read this, and i still go back to it occasionally and read a bit more each time - mebbe next time i should just skip a few pages when he starts announcing every single commander on the battlefield, their parentage and a concise report of their whole territories!! Can anyone say <snore>??

Phil :p
 
A number of years ago I got a good ways in to "The Coming of the King" by Nikolai Tolstoy but gave up on it & haven't touched it since. That's the only book I can think of that I've never finished once I started. Maybe I'll go back to it some day....but I doubt it.

Bill
 
HHHHMMMMMMMMMMMMMM :)

It seems like pretty much everybody toughs it out with a book :)

I just can't keep reading if I don't like it. Life's too short, right? :D I mean, I could die tomorrow! I guess I am too extremist person. Or maybe I just have a short attention span lol

Regards
Silly Wabbit
 
I'm with you Wabbit.
I'm a relatively slow reader I guess, so books tend to eat up a lot of my time. If I find I don't care about the characters or story by around page 100, I move on.
 
I'm with you Silly Wabbit, I don't continue with a book that I'm not into...although I may go back to it and try again..life's too short. ;)

The only time I force myself to perservere is when it's just the characters I don't like - sometimes that can tell me something about myself. For example, I had a terrible time getting through "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Garcia Marquez...I hated all the characters...but by the end I was really glad I perservered.

I have never been able to read Ulysses by Joyce and I've tried several times... I also could not get through Nikolai Tolstoy's "Coming of the King". Neither could I finish "Mists of Avalon", which people tell me they loved.

Sometimes I have to wait until I'm in the right frame of mind..i.e. a mystery frame, a fantasy frame, a historical fiction frame etc etc. If I'm not in the right mindset then the book won't work. :rolleyes:
 
I'm the same way about needing to be in the right frame of mind for a book, Vixen. I try to choose my books very carefully to meet the mood I am in at the time I start reading it...because it only takes me two to three days on average to finish a book, I usually continue in that mood at least through the book.

Its actually very effective, I believe there have only been three books that I've not finished in my life.
 
Mile-O

Erm ..... dunno :) Probably the poem (its the Penguin Classics version), but its not in the original Ancient Greek or anything ;)

Phil
 
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