Luckily, as a moderately speedy reader, I've been able to keep the time-wasting to a minimum. Not to say that I haven't read plenty of worthless books over the years- it pains me to think of all the pages spent on badly written material when I could have been reading something better.
So lately I've begun to reevaluate my policy. I started reading a book last spring that I just couldn't get into. I hated the writing style, the plot was confusing, and the characters flat and uninspiring. After about 100 pages, I put it down. Last week I started a book I got for Christmas from T-rav (one that I thought I wanted to read) and I'm thinking about dropping that one as well. I feel like I've given it a fair chance to persuade me to keep reading. If a book can't interest me after 210 pages, what's the point?
6 comments:
Good for you. I've had to put a few down in the last couple years because they are either too depressing or pornographic in nature. I hate that reading grown up fiction often means slogging through some offensive or disturbing stuff to find an author who can tell a story that doesn't make me want to kill myself at the end. I mean, I dumped a Jodi Picoult novel a few years back because I figured out what the big reveal would be in the first 25 pages and it made the rest so gut-wrenchingly sad I wanted to burn the dang book.
I give the book about 50-75 pages. If I don't like it by then, I figure it's not worth reading the rest. There are too many good books out there to read bad ones.
There have been two memorable lame-ducks in my life. "Crime and Punishmen"t and "A Tale of Two Cities". I read the first three chapters of Crime and Punishment and then put it down for five or six years before I finally finished it. About nine years ago I tried to read A Tale of Two Cities and I finally picked it back up a few months ago. It finally started to get interested yesterday and I'm on pg. 250.
Put it down! I came to this conclusion a few years ago - if you don't like the book at any point, your time is too valuable to waste. AND there are too many good books to waste time on bad ones.
Max, on the other hand, is a git-her-done kind of reader and won't stop reading anything, even as he cries out because of the torture.
I think I'm right and he's wrong :)
So that's my two cents.
ps - I would also say if you stop reading something at a given time, don't put it on the 'no' shelf forever. Sometimes you just need to encounter the book in a different context. That's happened to me several times.
My mother in law has a 100 page rule and it seems to work for her. I am a much less rule-abidnig citizen. Some books I force myself to finish even though I hate every second (Water for Elephants) and some books I just forget about and accidentally never finish reading, since I am always in the middle of about 10 other books. I agree with Callie that there are too many good books out there to read bad ones. I only take book recommendations from a few select people. You can be on my list.
Marlo- Glad to know you hated Water for Elephants. It keeps coming up on my recommended list on amazon, and since I like the cover, I'm always tempted.
Chavez- I can't believe you thought Crime and Punishment was a lame duck book. I thought I knew you...
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