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Location: Montreal -> CT -> MA -> Montreal -> Ottawa
17,330 posts, read 33,036,872 times
Reputation: 28903
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I used to be one of those people who thought, "Hey! I dropped money for this book -- I better finish it, even if I'm hating it."
Then I started "giving myself permission" to say, "Hey! Life's too short to spend time reading a book that's not enjoyable. Forget the money. Pick up a book that you really DO like."
When I started allowing myself to give up on a book, I would suffer a bit of guilt. Not any more. I just move on to a book that I'll (hopefully) enjoy more.
Do you read every book until the end, even if you're hating it?
Do you feel guilty for not reading a book to the end?
If I can't get into a book by the 4th chapter, I quit reading it. I don't buy many books though - library. Unless I'm reading something for class or a book club, I only read what interests me. Life's too short to waste on something you don't enjoy. That's what work is about, not reading.
I give myself permission to not finish a book all the time! There are too many amazing books to waste time on something I'm not enjoying. Could be my short attention span, but it doesn't have to be a book I'm hating necessarily. If I lose interest, I move on to another book and maybe pick it back up when I'm in the mood. I've been reading War and Peace for probably a year. I will finish it because I really like it, but sometimes I'm not in the mood for all that war and the peace doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon.
I hate to say this because I know it's a classic, but I can't so much read The Great Gatsby. *hides in shame* It's just not my style of writing and I tried really hard to like it and I just can't. It sounds like he's trying too hard. I picked it up, read the first 15 pages or so and put it back on the shelf and haven't picked it up since. The same thing happened with Gravity's Rainbow. Again, sorry to anyone who loves these.
Location: Montreal -> CT -> MA -> Montreal -> Ottawa
17,330 posts, read 33,036,872 times
Reputation: 28903
I'm glad to see that I've joined this smart group of people who let themselves move on from a book that they're just not enjoying. It's so liberating! I've started reading so many books that got great reviews on Amazon, only to find that it's just not doing it for me. I think, "Can so many people be wrong? Should I keep reading?" And then I realize, it's not about right or wrong -- it's just about taste.
J-City -- It's not shameful. I felt the same way. I wanted to love it. But I couldn't even read it, let alone love it. I find that to be the case with most classics. The old-fashioned writing style doesn't woo me. I'm the same way with old movies. They're just not for me.
Goodness, yes, all the time. I have so much less patience these days with badly-written books or ones that just don't hold my attention. At least with a movie you only lose a couple of hours of your day, but struggling thro a book you're just not enjoying can take days or even weeks and I'm not getting any younger here!
About The Great Gatsby, I read it in high school for AP Lit, and I never finished it. I thought it was dreadful. I recently took a 24 hr road trip (12 there & 12 back), and I grabbed 4 audio books. Why waste all that time surfing for bad radio stations? The Great Gatsby was the last one I listened to. This time, maybe because I was trapped in a car alone with nothing better to do, it was ok. I don't think I'll buy a copy (got it from the library) and reread it, but it was much better this time. It took 3/4 of the way through before I got into it though.
I have found that, because our families live 2 & 6 hours away, audio books are good way for me to "read" some of the potentially boring books. Now, if they are very dreadful, I eject them and forget it, but audio books (even the boring ones) make the long trips more tolerable, IMO.
Do you read every book until the end, even if you're hating it?
Do you feel guilty for not reading a book to the end?
My answers are: 1. No way 2. Almost always (although, I'd feel stupid finishing a book I hated so will opt for short-lived guilt at not finishing instead)
Funny to me to see Fitzgerald and Pynchon described as having an old-fashioned writing style. I guess maybe in comparison to post-modern lit.
Yes!!!!! The most recent was Confessions of an Economic Hit Man(something like that....it went into the garbage, rather than the donations box, when we moved...didn't want that trash disinforming someone else), which promised to be insider knowledge, but turned out to be the usual warmed-over Marxist tripe/one-worlder crap every school teacher in America seems to have been infected with.
But for the last few years, the whole family has been tossing, partially-read, the works of people who had been billed as 'rebels', 'free-thinkers' (blah blah blah), who turned out to be nothing more than cookie cutter Marxist/Socialist hacks.
Frankly, neither DH nor myself have bought a book since we left Mississippi last year (nor do we subscribe to newspapers or magazines anymore...and we didn't bother with converter boxes for the televisions, or get Cable). What little truth is to be found is on the Internet. Soon, that window will be closed, too.
Apparently, one cannot publish non-fiction in America, unless one is a fully indoctrinated Marxist (except for writers of the 'Conservative Christian' Sarah Palin type pap which does more to advance Marxism than it does to advance 'Conservatism').
I do try to finish every book I start but I am a pretty good book picker. On the other hand, sometimes books in which I know I have no particular interest become popular, and I try to read them out of curiosity - ie, maybe the aren't as bad as I think, or just to get a handle on what others seem to like.
For instance, I can't remember the title of the series what became so popular and that deals with the end of the world and the rapture, so I picked up a book a few years ago, but two pages in, and then simply paging through it, I absolutely could not read anything so badly written and so primitively thought out. Even thinking about it now makes me shudder. What a waste of trees.
There are some other books like that as well, books that are just too badly written to read. I don't remember their titles specifically.
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*hides in shame* It's just not my style of writing and I tried really hard to like it and I just can't. It sounds like he's trying too hard. I picked it up, read the first 15 pages or so and put it back on the shelf and haven't picked it up since. The same thing happened with Gravity's Rainbow. Again, sorry to anyone who loves these.
