• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

When to give up on a book

Stewart said:
Whenever you want. I gave up on The Fellowship of The Ring, with just one chapter to read.
Click to expand...


I'm glad to hear this! I struggled through The Hobbit. I kept telling myself I should love this since it was by the granddaddy of fantasy novels, and I'd read this sort of thing since I was 12. Note:If you have to wave pom-poms and do cartwheels to get through a book, it's probably not a good fit. I've avoided the other LOTR books since then. The movies were fine, but only after my kids explained things.:blink:
 
abecedarian said:
I kept telling myself I should love this since it was by the granddaddy of fantasy novels, and I'd read this sort of thing since I was 12. ....... Note:If you have to wave pom-poms and do cartwheels to get through a book, it's probably not a good fit.
Click to expand...

Heh. If you tell yourself you should like something, and don't, said thing isn't what you thought it was to begin with. ;)


I don't have a set criteria, other than the "ennh factor". If that persists for an unknowable/unguessable length of time, that book is placed in an out of the way area that I am unlikely to run across it anytime soon. Or, if energy permits, it is re-shelved.
 
Can't handle tales of the Third Age, you guys need to steer clear of The Silmarillion! ;) I liked The Hobbit the first time I read it, but I loved it during my second reading.
 
If I get bored with a book, I flip over some pages and see if there is anything in coming chapters, that would catch my fancy. If the plot improves, I read back from where I stopped earlier. Otherwise, I quit.
Though i am a big fan of Anita Desai , I could not withstand her novel 'Zig Zag Way' beyond a few pages.
 
The farthest I've ever made it into a book before giving up was 100 pages into Letting Go by Phillip Roth. I really should have stopped at 50.
 
I tried and tried to read Insomnia by Stephen King and The celestine Prophacy, in fact at the same time, i flitted between the two to try and ease the boredom, but still I couldnt finish them.
 
Life is too short to read bad books. I forced myself through Anne Rice's Feast of All Saints. I had loved Cry to Heaven so I thought FoAS would be comparable. It was not. I still don't even know exactly what the story was about, and couldn't tell you anything about the characters, because by the time I got to the end I had forgotten the unmemorable events that happened at the beginning.

After spending about two weeks slogging through that swamp of a book, I came to the determination that if I didn't like a book, I would not force myself to read it all the way through, whether I was 3 pages in or 300. Bad book is bad!
 
I'm one who likes to force myself to read all of it. Then again, I tend to avoid the book and then after some time, start another one. Life is indeed too short to read bad backs, great advice.:flowers:
 
scribeswindow said:
At what point do you give up on a book? It was suggested to me once, that if a book didn't grab me, read only up to your age. Yes, I was confused too. What you do is minus your age from 100 and the result are the number of pages you persevere through. For example, if you are 25 years of age, you read 75 pages of the book, hoping it will grab you at some stage. If not, then you can give the book up at page 75. If you are 40 years of age, that will leave you with only 60 pages to read, etc.

Supposedly the idea is that the older you get, the less time you have to offer a bad read, so therefore you can give up earlier and earlier. Hope that all makes sense? Anyway, I thought I would share this with you as I found it extremely funny. I have used this technique a few times now and sometimes the book does grab me before I have to give it up and I'm glad I kept going. :)
Click to expand...

Love it! Great system. Personally I follow the 50 page rule - if it doesn't grab me by then it's not for me. Too many books, too little time....
 
This is why I love my Kindle so much. I can download a sample and read before deciding to buy. If I'm not hooked by the time I get to the end of the sample, it's not for me. Sometimes I don't get past the opening paragraph!
 
kcmay that is a good way to weed out the books that you will not enjoy. My local library offers a "First Chapter" service that I often use. And Amazon has that too, with certain books. The problem for me is often I can't tell by the end of the first chapter!
 
It is very rare that I give up on a book. I have come close on a few but usually I drudge through it.
 
Litany said:
Cities in Flight. 640 pages long according to Amazon. I gave up two pages before the end. It was a painful struggle to get through and I kept thinking to myself 'It's nearly over, I'm nearly there', and the frigging author just wouldn't let well enough alone. He couldn't just end it, he had to try and be clever. My little brain drew its line in the sand and I could never finish it. SF Masterwork my arse.

I think it was being considered a 'masterwork' that made me stick at it for so long. Love in the Time of Cholera didn't last more than a few hours, Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell I made it half way through. Probably, rather than feeling my life slipping away from me, I give a book more or less of a chance based on its reputation and my opinion of the people I know that liked it. People I would almost have considered sane like Jonathan Strange, but some absolute tossers completely adored LitToC.
Click to expand...

I did the same with Anna Karenina. I closed it up when I had 30 pages left. The damn book is about 800 pages long!!!!
 
I often have several books in various stages of completion all over the house. I really try to finish books that I start, but my most recent failure was "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Steig Larsson. I gave up after about 50 pages.
 
~Anne~ said:
I often have several books in various stages of completion all over the house. I really try to finish books that I start, but my most recent failure was "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Steig Larsson. I gave up after about 50 pages.
Click to expand...

Thank goodness somebody else agrees.

IMO, that book is vastly overrated. While I managed to finish it, I didn't think it was anything special. It's the reason I haven't read the second or third book.

For me, if it doesn't grab my attention half way through the book, then I'm finished with it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top