Do you stick with books you don’t enjoy?

I used to but definitely not! Even with the library authors get paid per loan, the book is seen as more popular it was taken out and someone else could love it!!!

Ha ha. Are you me?
I do a fair amount of motorway driving and listening to an audio book really does help with the boredom of a long distance drive. It also helps with getting through books I am struggling with.

I always finish Bookclub books, if I’m struggling with it I swap to audio.

I get my books from charity shops or borrow from the library, if I'm not enjoying any of them after half a dozen pages back they go, life us really too short. I don't keep fiction anyway, don't like too many books in my home, they attract dust and i rarely reread a novel. And i do bin really terrible books, not ashamed to say that. It's only paper after all.

It depends whether it’s a classic or not. I wouldn’t bother sticking with a Bill Bryson book, for example, if I wasn’t enjoying it (I like Bryson btw). But when it’s a classic, I feel kind of duty bound to keep going. Last year, for example, I abandoned Middlemarch. I enjoyed it to begin with, but got bogged down. If that was an Agatha Christie novel, I’d ditch it for good, but most critics consider Middlemarch one of the greatest novels in the English language, so I will return at some point.

There have been many classics I have wanted to abandon. I find Joseph Conrad hard-going at times, and also D H Lawrence. Actually, even writers I adore, like Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, Iris Murdoch and Evelyn Waugh, occasionally bore or frustrate me.

No life’s too short. It’s the same with tv or films. If they are rubbish or start to get rubbish (such as series that started good but several series in are becoming silly) then I abandon ship.

You don’t win any prizes for getting to the end of something

Me neither! I really wanted to like Terry Pratchett's books, lots of people I like love him, but his writing just never clicked with me.

No, I don't. It's why I have never joined a book group _ I would hate to feel obliged to plough on with something that didn't interest me.

But for Book Group I do continue, even when I hate it

So do I, except for The Midnight Library, which I just couldn't get into. I even persevered with a Terry Pratchett that most of the members gave up on. I discovered that I just don't "get" Terry Pratchett.

Sometimes I do..I feel one of my biggest - failures in the subject of reading - is giving up on a Bill Bryson book.. Because I often read snippets of his writing and I know it's amazing so I don't understand why I couldn't persevere with whichever book of his I tried. Small Island maybe.

But generally, I give it a good shot and then give up with no regrets.. Life's too short to keep struggling on

I used to but i feel ife is too short for that. There are so many other books out there waiting to be read

Nope life is too short and I’ve too many books to read!

I download samples from Kindle and if I’ve not got into the book by the time the sample runs out then I don’t continue.
But for Book Group I do continue, even when I hate it, even when it has brilliant reviews. Only to show commitment to the group. ‘The Dispossessed’ by Ursula Le Guin being case in point 😬

I very seldom don't finish novels, and I quite enjoyed All Fours until after the protagonist got home again from her weird stay in the hotel and started weightlifting and rehearsing a dance to send to Whatshisname, and meeting her friends at the hotel room. Then I thought 'How much longer can this possible go on?' and looked her up on Instagram, where I became briefly fascinated by how many posts she puts up of her doing strange dances in her living room, wearing swimsuits or underwear or bits of plastic or nothing. I still haven't finished it.

I had this in All Fours.

I wasn't enjoying it anyway and then there was all the confusion of a they/them 7 yr old which squired a lot of rereading to try and parse the meaning.

I did finish it though bit have since wondered why.

I didn't enjoy The Safekeep but kept going with it and am glad I dod because the twist at then end was really interesting and thought provoking. Just wish it had been sooner in the book because it was a slog to get there.

😬

The writing is great. It's because of what he did which is covered in that chapter.

Your time on this earth is finite, and any time you spend reading a book you hate to the end is time you now won’t have to read a book you’d love.

Every book you finish and loathe means another great book out there that you’ll never get to read before you die.

Books are meant to be entertainment, not a dose of medicine.

Curious. Is the book repulsive because it’s badly written, or because Baden Powell was a dodgy fellow?

same here.

Absolutely not. Why suffer if im not enjoying it.

I give 50 pages too. There haven't been many I've chosen to give up on with this rule, but there have been a number that just needed a little more than the first chapter or two so the system works for me.
The few I've called it a day on have gone to the charity shop, as I do with any that were 'just ok' .

I think some people almost need permission to stop and move on, or at the least be told it is an option and perfectly ok thing to do. I used to go into our local school to listen to yr6 readers, and would often get the complaint that the book was boring and they just weren't enjoying it. For some you could see it blowing their mind when I replied with a "OK, so let's sack it off and choose another from the library". One DC asked me open-mouthed if I was sure that was allowed 😬 Yes! Life is too short and the world is full of more books than you can ever read in your lifetime, so spend your reading time on something you'll enjoy! Often those DCs needed help to be matched to something they'd like as they just hadn't grasped what a range of topics/genres/styles etc existed. Their experience of selecting a book had been getting a couple of minutes to chose a title, with the only guidance being to have the correct coloured sticker on the spine to match their level. I'm not sure anyone would be likely to get a good match under those conditions without already knowing a good deal about the books on offer.

No, there are millions of books out there. Not going to chain myself to one that takes me ages to read just to finish it.

Nope. I've got a book about Baden Powell and I'm struggling with one chapter because it's repulsive. But it's not gone back on my shelf yet...

I used to always, always stay with a book until the end.
Then I was reading a second or third Grisham - I picked it up at a home where I was spending the weekend - and thought, Why am I bothering?
I do still stick doggedly with something I don't enjoy if it's something I feel I ought to read, that it has merits beyond my own limited tastes.