I'm reading a book right now - Lionel Shriver's The Post-Birthday World - and I'm just not sure I like it. I'm about 75 pages in and it's taken me all week to get there. I force myself to read on the bus, to see if the further I get the more interesting it'll become, but it's not happening. The thing is, the reviews are excellent. Entertainment Weekly called it the Novel of the Year (2007), other reviews call it engaging, imaginative, provocative...
I'll give it "imaginative," as it's kind of a dual-plot book. At the end of the first (never-ending) chapter, the main character must decide if she'll cheat on her boyfriend with another man. Then the chapters alternate: the first "Chapter 2" explores what happens if she does cheat, while the second "Chapter 2" explores what happens if she doesn't - and so on. I like the the concept, but the descriptions, the language, the weird humor and the very-little dialogue has me mostly skimming, trying to get to the good parts. Sometimes I find some nuggets that interest me, but most often I'm dreaming of reading something else.
Question (as Dwight would say): When do you give up on a book? I never used to, but as I get older, I realize life's too short to waste time on something uninteresting. Right?
6 comments:
At work I have to give up on books all the time simply for time constraints. But also sometimes I do it when I don't like the book. Like Escape, just made me literally sick with all the incest. In those cases I read about 100-125 to get the gist. Kind of weird to have all these half read books now but I don't mind.
Personally the only book I haven't finished is Chabons Kavalier and Clay. I've tried several times. Can't get past chapter 2.
Ugh, you know me, I power through. That's how I felt about And Then We Came to the End. It got all these awards, was supposed to be side=splittingly funny, etc. I struggled to read it and finish it. Some parts were kinda funny, yeah, but for the most part I really thought it sucked.
I can't remember the last time I quit reading a book before the last page, although I have been known to skim through chapters to see if it gets any better. Do you think it's just our personality to keep reading a bad book in the hopes it will get better? (Me, you and Willikat.)
I always try to read through to the end, too. I'll skim to get through it more quickly, too. Lately I have been trying to be more picky about what I start reading. If someone whose opinion I trust tells me a book is no good, I don't bother with it. I agree, A., life is too short to read something boring!
CMS - maybe it's because we're all writers and we want to give each book a fair chance.
Or, if you spend money on it, you don't want to feel like you're wasting your money either.
It's gotten to the point where I'm purposely not reading because I'm not enjoying it, so I think that means it's time to stop. At least for now.
If I don't see myself getting into a book within the first few pages, I put it down right away because once I start reading something, I very rarely quit. I usually go back to it down the road and try again. Sometimes I just have to be in the mood for certain kinds of stories. I can count on one hand how many times I have quit reading a book. If the reading is really dragging for me, I will take breask from it and read something else along with it. It really bothers me to quit once I have gotten into a book, no matter how much I may loathe reading it.
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