This week's Booking Through Thursday question is quite timely for me:If you're not enjoying a book, will you stop mid-way? Or do you push through to the end. What makes you decide to stop?
I used to be quite diligent about finishing a book I started. Particularly if I had gone to the trouble to buy the thing. As I've gotten older, I realize that there is less and less time in front of me for reading all the books I want to read (Shoot, I think my TBR list is long enough right now that I need to live to be about 150....and that's if I don't add any more. Which I will.). I just ditched Mary Queen of Scots. I was being stubborn and trying to soldier on through that one simply because it was on my Birth Year Reading Challenge list. But I finally decided that I could not read one more word. Not one. I'll just have to find another book published in 1969 to take its place.
What made me decide to stop? It was drop-dead boring. Not well-written. Repetitive. It was history and footnoted/research-noted and the notes were absolutely no help at all. Need I go on? I think I mentioned on another meme that if the book is too much work (back-breaking, ditch-digging, mindless, why-am-I-doing-this work) then it needs to go. Difficult is fine as long as it's rewarding. Books with no reward (aesthetically, plot-wise, good characters, teaching, etc) are hard to finish.
I once figured out that in order to finish all the books on my TBR list, I'd need to live at least 224 years. But I'd still be adding more books all the time, so there's really no hope!
ReplyDelete150 was probably a low estimate....
ReplyDeleteMaybe I need 500 years..*grin*
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I think why should I waste time reading something I don't like when there are so many more to choose from..
Here is my BTT: Giving Up post!
I too used to read anything that I started, but it was actually Stephen King that made me quit that. In high school, everyone and their mother was hot for him, so I ploughed through three of his books before finally, I just quit. It was too much. Now I'm quite vicious about dropping something that stops working for me.
ReplyDelete