Do you stick with books you don’t enjoy?

[Namechanger67]

I always feel very guilty to abandon a book I am not enjoying so what normally happens is that I keep it in standby and feel unable to start a new one. Then I fall out of the habit and takes me months to start reading again. Obv not a good approach but I wonder how many people persevere or abandon books they don’t like. Do you then give them away or keep them in your collection?

If it's a "classic" then I continue, mostly so I can try and see what others enjoyed so much about it. There's been a few cases where I found the first half of the book a slog but ultimately loved the book.

For anything else, eg. easy reading/pop fiction/detective drama etc I'm not going to give it more than 2 chapters to convince me it is worth reading.

I used to and then a few years ago I thought life's too short just accept you aren't enjoying it dnd find another you can't wait to pick back up again

I'd rather "waste" money DNF'ing a book than hours of my life struggling through to the end, even if it is a classic if I'm not enjoying reading it.

I might have had more patience when I was younger but, at 60 now, I just don't care. I read only what I want to read. And I hesitate to even call it wasting money, rather a finding out sooner rather than later and knowing what I do actually want to read.

Ditto.

As I've got older I've realised my time left is too precious to be spent slogging through a book that I'm not enjoying.
A few years back I thought I'd read Virginia Woolf's 'To The Lighthouse' because I'd heard of it and I'd never read anything by her...
I persevere with it until the end, waiting for something interesting to happen - it never did.

I've got some Kindle books that I return to when I've given up on something new. I'm so fussy about books that it takes me ages to choose something from the library.

I used to abandon books really casually but am trying to get better at finishing them. However I am currently struggling with how badly written The Ministry of Time is. I kept muttering, 'And another shite, overwritten irrelevant simile! And another. And another!' in bed last night which must have tried DH's patience. But there's one every other sentence. As if she got them generated by AI and just cut and pasted them in to make the novel twice as long.

And the handling of such a great idea (It is a brilliant idea, I admit, which is why I bought it) is so facile. Like she is writing for people with a reading age of eight. It's making me angry that such sloppy writing is being touted as good. I wish I could find a modern author who understands the power of simple, economic prose, like Graham Greene did. Really attention-pulling overwriting is so popular these days. I love a good simile, but only when it's needed.

Drop ones I actively dislike very quickly. If I’m just having an absence of enjoyment I give it another chapter /20 pages or so then stop. If I am really on the fence, I might give it a quick google for reviews and see if there’s a theme along the lines of “stick with it” or “I wasn’t enjoying this until…”

Thank you. I was feeling tetchy about wasting money on The Ministry of Time but would I rather waste a tenner of my money or hours of my time. Think I will drop it at one of the little libraries.

Ni. Ive read 12 books this month and given up on 2. Life is too short

I always tried to stick with it, I’m glad I did with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo as that was slow going at first but I really enjoyed it in the end and have all the others. I really couldn’t get into The Blue Hour at all and gave up.

I started working life as a librarian and never let myself give up on a book I had started. I read loads in my youth, plenty spare time with no kids, no elderly parents and no overwhelming work pressure. (Plus no internet or smart phones!).

I'm now 30 years older, all the life stresses etc and do not have enough time to read stuff I'm not enjoying. Quite happy to give up on a book these days.

I used to stick with it but now having less spare time to read than I would like if I don't feel it in the first couple of chapter I recycle and pass it on.

I used to but realised it was okay not to finish a book. Once I realised that, reading became far more enjoyable. I even gave-up on the classic we were reading for Bookclub because I wasn’t really enjoying it.

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.

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...

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.

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.

Absolutely not. Why suffer if im not enjoying it.

same here.

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

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.

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

😬

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.

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.