Do you always finish a book once you've started it?

Oh me too! I have a shelf devoted to books I haven't read yet.

ipanemagirl, I'm terrible at buying books & not reading them as well. I have a huge pile sat waiting to be read!

Hi Rosmerta were you on the 'due Dec 08' thread? Your name is familiar! I was on that thread until I had an MC in May

I really didn't like the Glass Eaters at all. I was ill with flu at the time and I don't think I was quite all there when I was reading it! I only persevered because it had been recommended to me by a good friend who is an English Lit education coordinator. I thought if she liked it, it must be good! I was wrong, it was rubbish!

No I frequently don't finish books, even worse I have often bought them and not even started them!! I'm terrible at it. I have little patience unless I am grabbed immediately.

no - like op said used to read through no matter what but life is too short.

The ones I do make myself finish are ones for my book group. One book I struggled with was Half of a Yellow Sun but I was glad I stuck with it in the end.

Becky, I've tried to read the Glass Eaters book about 3 times but have never got past the 2nd chapter. Doesn't sound like I've missed much!

I usually finish them because of the not knowing whether I'm going to miss a good bit. Sometimes I've started a book and found it hard to get into but somewhere around the middle have changed my opinion of it. There was a book by Alastair Reynolds which was huge and, although I didn't hate it, I wasn't really enjoying it. At the very end, in the last 100 pages it suddenly became absolutely brilliant and the whole book made sense and I was very glad that I'd finished it. Equally, I sometimes persevere and get to then end of a book and find it was a pointless waste of my time (On Chesil Beach springs to mind). I do give up early if there is poor use of English or grammatical mistakes and the plot is rubbish.

No I don't. I read a lot as a child and borrowed books from the school library and the library in town. I still remember a primary school teacher who refused to let me change a book at the school library because I told her I hadn't finished it. She made me wade through it before it could be changed. She was a terrible teacher, made it clear she didn't like me and my work really suffered during that year. As bad luck would have it she reappeared at my High School as a Maths teacher . I dropped Maths.

I feel really bad if I don't finish a book and there are only two books I haven't managed to finish and have given up on:
Ulysses by James Joyce
Love and Nausea by David Wilson

I think I was also brought up to persevere with books! I agree that life is too short but somehow I just feel so bad if I give u. Although I regret this with The Da Vinci Code, the Dream Book of the Glass Eaters (or was it the Glass book of the Dream Eaters) and Labyrinth by Kate Mosse. I should have given up!

I finish books that I've started. Not out of a sense of duty, but because I feel there might be something good about the book that I would otherwise miss.

Case in point: Just finished The Book Thief. Worst book ever. I should have just thrown it into the fire after the first 50 pages when its superficial & juvenile style was so evident, with Death banging on about the color of the sky etc.

No, i do try to and there haven't been many i haven't been able to finish.

I tend to read book i have a good idea i'll like though. Since looking on here for inspiration for reading material i'm sure there will be more book i just don't finish.

No.

50 pages.

If it's not doing anything for me after that I move on.

no

life is too short

I often have several on the go at once though, and read a whole 'easy' one before going back to the slog

No , if I really can't get into it after the first couple of chapters then I move on to the next one . Reading for me is about enjoyment not punishing myself .

I have in the past perservered because a friend has gone on about something and thought I would really enjoy it but most of the time my rule works