Abandoning books - life's too short

[Kayemm]

Last year I started an 'Abandoned ' shelf on my Goodreads account and it's about to get it's first 2026 addition.
It's The Fraud by Zadie Smith, it's my book club book. It's the first I've Abandoned in this incarnation of the group. I'm feeling slightly guilty as I know a couple of others have Abandoned it too.

Do you abandon or plough on?

Weirdly I think that was the first book I ever abandoned

I couldn’t get on with that either

I never used to, but I’ve become ruthless because I could be reading something amazing. I love our Book Club becomes it’s opened me up to genres that never really appealed before. However my final straw was ‘25 reasons to hate Christmas & Cowboys’. Awful.

I also abandoned the Fraud last year, it was unbelievably hard work so I left it. I also left Daisy Jones and the Six as about a third of the way through I realised I disliked every single character.

It's rare I totally abandon a bookbonce started but what I do instead is skim read a bit ever so often so I can still see what happens at the end. I did this with The Time Travellers Wife because large sections were unbelievably tedious.

If you’re abandoning books often, you’re probably not being picky enough about what you choose to read. These days, I usually have a good sense of what will appeal to me
What's your secret? Is it 'staying within your comfort zone'?

Book club has made me read some stinkers (hence the increasing number of DNF) but it has also introduced me to some good books that I might not otherwise have picked up.

It took me about 3 attempts to get into this book. Don't know why I persisted, I usually abandon and forget, I guess lots of people were telling me how good it is. I really enjoyed on the final attempt!

Yes, exactly. If I'm browsing, and I pick up a totally unfamiliar book by an author I've never heard of, I will open it randomly and read a single sentence. That gives me a feel for the prose. If it passes the sentence test, then I will read the back blurb, review extracts etc and go back to the first page. This means that if I do buy it, it's likely not to be abandoned.

I'm re-reading my own bookshelves, to reduce quantities of 'literary fiction', and my rate of abandonment (and thus disposal) of books I kept because I enjoyed them 1st time around (late 70s onwards) is phenomenal. At this rate I'm going to end up with nothing left except Austen, Dickens, A.Trollope, and some Viragos (plus classic crime, Tolkein and Liane Moriarty 😆)

I’m thinking of abandoning the book The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. I’ve tried a few times and not got anywhere it’s on its last chance

I'm glad its not just me! Was genuinely questioning whether I'd had some sort of funny turn or something, I had to read every sentence about 3 times. I think its maybe to do with the fact its v descriptive, but I have no visual imagination, so its largely meaningless to me

I don’t often abandon books, but did also abandon ‘The Fraud’! 🫣

I can’t get on with zadie smith….I’ve abandoned 2 of her books, though did manage one as a drama on the radio. I abandon books, always have done, sometimes go back if the consensus is it’s good. I went back to Bring up the Bodies, so glad I did, and LOTR, 30 years ago mind.

Oh goodness, I'm the same! I'll bet that's why it's such a struggle at the beginning!

When I was younger I used to think it was disrespecting the author to abandon a book they had put much effort into

after having forced my way through some shockers I’ve decided that a lot of the authors are disrespecting me by publishing such nonsense

i have two forms of abandonment

1. it’s so bad I’m giving it to the charity shop (currently The shadow of the wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon)

2. I put a book mark in and put it back on the shelf to come back to. Currently a book set in Nigeria - I had to abandon it due to a sexual assault in it that quite upset me. Will come back to it when I am over that!!

Abandon . If I’m not enjoying the first two chapters and / or the style of writing I give up . Another thing that puts me off a book is too long chapters . Short and choppy for me please .

Abandon! I never used to but last year I gave up on Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi after two attempts to get through it as I did not care about any of the characters. I abandoned a Colleen Hoover book too. Will never pick up anything she's written again. I have too many lovely books waiting to be read to waste my time on things for the sake of finishing them.

OMG - I have met my tribe. Less abandon. Instead skim / scan rapidly through to the end.
1.Shy Creatures- Clare Chambers. A slow pace for the expected denouement of childhood abuse. I’m sorry to be dismissive of the experience. However, I feel that maybe too often the theme is used to capitalise a story arc.

@Bruisername ”When I was younger I used to think it was disrespecting the author to abandon a book they had put much effort into
after having forced my way through some shockers I’ve decided that a lot of the authors are disrespecting me by publishing such nonsense.”

Sassy! 😂

I find that now I'm in my fifties, I abandon far more books than I did when I was younger. I dont have time to waste on rubbish ... looking at you Zadie Smith.

I cant decide if I'm jaded or if people really are worse at writing books these days? I'm currently reading an old spy novel despite being gifted a best-selling novel for Christmas.

I haven’t done quite the maths that @CocoPlum has done, but I certainly abandon if I feel that there are better ways to spend 3h+ of my life

I've been in a book club for nearly 10 years, in that time membership has changed and so have the books - now they are very worthy and well written, but mainly 'plotless'.

I like the people - and the second hour of food and drink, but that abandoned shelf is getting fuller and fuller.

I have mixed feelings about this. If the book is just a scandi noir, or a bit of light historical fiction, I won’t hesitate to ditch it. But if it’s a classic, I feel more obliged to keep going. I really don’t like abandoning great works, and it’s hard to know when to call it quits. I started Middlemarch last year, for example, and persevered because people whose opinion I respect (Harold Bloom, Virginia Woolf, etc) thought it a masterpiece. However, I have abandoned the following classics half way through:

Thomas Mann The Magic Mountain (didn’t like the translation)
Philip Roth: Portnoy’s Complaint (charmless, repulsive and unfunny)
Daniel Defoe: Moll Flanders (just not a very good story)
Tolstoy: War and Peace (couldn’t keep track of the names; plan to re-try)
D. H. Lawrence: Women in Love (Lawrence is just too heavy and intense and dictatorial for me)
Robert Graves: I Claudius (loved the TV series, but was disappointed by the original novel)

I abandon guilt free. And ive also stopped reading my local Waterstones staff picks as I've had to abandon every single one from there 😬

Its the publishers. Name counts for far more than substance.