Life's to short to read shit books... Or...

[mylittleyumyum]

Do you feel guilty for giving up part way through a book? I am persevering miserably with a Karin Slaughter crap-fest even though I have a pile of other, more enticing books waiting for me. I've also 'parked' The Testaments because I know I'll go back to it even though I lost interest about 10 pages in. I've always had this problem and I dread to think how many hours of my life I've wasted.
When I was a child I read every kid's book in our library and was always ordering more. One of my lovely teachers gave me a massive box of books and I read every one of them. Books were not to be wasted..
I need a good shake!

I don’t understand the “must persevere” thing. I don’t watch films I dislike all the way through, or stick to a full series of a tv show I don’t warm to. I mean, maybe when books were rare and expensive, but I can, from the comfort of my sofa, access hundreds of books for free in seconds so why would I plough through some drivel?

I love the concept of ghosting books. I so do this, I never officially stop reading a book I just read a different book for a while and then another one. I won’t go back to later

I’m in my sixties and now work on the basis that, even if I read 40 books a year, and live to be 100 there are only about 1300 books I can fit in. So now I think is it worthy of being one of those 1300. If not, out it goes. There are millions of books to be enjoyed, I don’t see the point of enduring any.

I joined a book club to make me start reading more. Coincidentally (or maybe not) I have also abandoned more books since joining! Nothing could make me endure more than the first third of Frankenstein and Absolute Proof by Peter James was like a bad Dan Brown and that's saying something - I think I got to page 12. But I read both Jane Eyre and The Great Gatsby for the first time in years and enjoyed both. I was almost put off the latest one (Blood Orange) by the number of dubious ecstatic reviews by fellow authors which were almost longer than the book itself. Unfortunately I didn't heed my instincts. Big mistake.

Happy to abandon library books. If I bought it, I'm more likely to plot grimly through to get my money's worth.

My local library is being used as a makeshift nursery at the moment, so I am buying books at the supermarket when I do my weekly shop.

I had Kindle Unlimited for a while but I'm not sure I was using it to my advantage... I still seemed to be paying for the books I wanted to read.

I never used to give up on a book, ever. I forced myself to finish even Atlas Shrugged! But these days I don't see the point. It still feels rude though and I mentally apologise to the author.

@mylittleyumyum Does your library membership give you access to Borrowbox? Lots of e and e audio books to download.

If a book hasn’t grabbed me after say 10 pages, it goes to the charity shop. I CBA to waste time on it.

@Lancashirebornandbred - I once went to an Author Event for Fay Weldon and she said very much the same, that there are more books available than you could ever possibly read so if it doesn't grab you in the first 30 minutes, move on to something else and don't feel bad as we all have different tastes!

I'll abandon without any remorse. I used to pride myself on persevering but now I'm with lancashire - life's too short! But I do try and get round that by doing as mentioned upthread and vetting to get a feel of a book to gauge whether I'll get on with it. No point in even starting if you know you're going to loathe it