Reading books...

[sleigh]

On Melinda's most recent post, she mentioned that her reviews are almost always four or five stars since she rarely finishes a novel she doesn't like. That makes perfect sense to me: like Melinda, if I start reading a novel, put it down for the night and it doesn't scream at me to pick it up the next day, I leave it down. A novel in which I lose interest part of the way through, or which for one reason or another I find annoying to read, I don't finish. I'll usually give a novel 50 pages or so, but if after that point it hasn't grabbed me, then I move on to the next one.

Life (and spare reading time) is too short to finish a piece of fiction I don't enjoy. (It's different for non-fiction; then, I'm often reading more for information than entertainment, and so I'm more likely to finish the book -- but even then, I've stopped reading research books halfway through as well...)

What about you? If you're reading a novel, do you feel compelled to stick with it all the way to the end, no matter what? If so, why?

Comments

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever said, "Ugh, this book is awful, and I'm going to stop reading it right now!" Okay, maybe once; see below.

I stop reading because a book doesn't compel me to pick it back up. It's put-downable. The two most recent books I've done this with are Bujold's The Hallowed Hunt and Anne Bishop's first Black Jewels book, Daughter of the Blood.

I took two shots at the Bujold, because I was enjoying it in general. But both times, around page 100, I put it down and just never picked it back up again. It was enjoyable, but not compelling. I didn't care what happened next. Stuff happened, it was interesting, but it felt slow. I was on page 100 and it still felt like the story hadn't really begun.

It's slightly different with the Bishop. I started reading it, but each time I put it down, I never felt compelled to pick it up again. I kept trying, though, because to go by synopses and reviews, I should be the target audience for the book. But it never felt...solid? It's almost the opposite of the problem I had with the Bujold--I felt as if I had missed some chapters somewhere. I was on page 50 and in the thick of the story and had no idea what was going on. I like in medias res and letting the reader figure out what's happening, but there wasn't enough inclueing for me.

I'm usually willing to take a second or even third stab at a book that doesn't grab me initially. I know that sometimes the problem is my mood when I tried, or the book's style doesn't match with my current (but changeable) tastes. But sometimes a book is just obviously not for me. That's the case with Bujold's Sharing Knife series. I started the first book and around page twenty I said, "Yeah, no, just not my thing." It smelled too heavily of schmoopy romance, and that's just not appealing to me.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Good point to clarify -- it's the same for me. Not finishing a book doesn't necessarily mean that the book's terrible; it means that for whatever reason, it wasn't compelling enough for me. It didn't yell at me to pick it back up. I've stopped reading books with perfectly serviceable prose, with decent characters and plots, simply because they were just under that threshold where I can't not finish it.

And I've finished a few books where the ending just left me cold and unsatisfied, as well.