Interesting discussion, mostly because of how many people say they don’t like giving up on a book and always try to finish. Someone please explain this to me! Why is this a thing?
Have you ever given up on a book?
When I was younger, I prided myself in NEVER giving up on a book. Then, I hit one in my 20's that just never clicked. Halfway through, I gave up.
A decade later, I tried that book, again, and gave up in the same spot.
Ever happen to you? Or am I just weird?
I know a lot of people who feel a compulsion to finish every book they start and I don’t get it, especially when it’s not even for a class or a book club or anything. I’ll drop a book the second I find myself thinking “this sucks.” There are too many good books out there and I do not read that fast.
Exactly! I cannot hope to ever read every good book I want to read. A book gets 5 pages… a movie or a TV show get 15 minutes. “It gets really good in season 4!” Buddy, cut the first 3 seasons then and we’ll talk.
I usually give a book about 10% of its page count to hook me, though I’ll absolutely drop it before that if something actively puts me off of it. I already got my degrees, I don’t wanna do homework anymore
The only book series I ever re-arrempted and managed to power through a massive slump in interest was Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius books. Glad I did, but Jesus, the third book was just too meandering at first until I started seeing the "plot" in all the vignettes.
Like, once you figure out (spoiler) it's about a drug overdose, you start to make the connections and start to see what's actually happening around the main pov.
Sunk cost fallacy, both financial and temporal, for me. My parents didn't raise a quitter and that shit internalized. 😔
That being said, I do think there's merit in reading a bad book you don't like, if to gain some understanding of bad/mid prose/execution and tinker with how to improve it?
I mean, that's perfectly sensible. Saves you more time, at least. I just used to read fast, and my reading habits go towards trying to dissect the nuts and bolts of writing, and why bad prose was bad was a lot easier to work out than why quality prose was good, and try to make it better in my head.
