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

[kk1raven.livejournal.com]

I finish most fiction that I start because I generally never start the books that I'm not likely to enjoy. I don't feel any compulsion to finish a book if it isn't interesting to me though. I don't just have a to-be-read pile. I have a to-be-read mountain that is taking over my house like an erupting volcano of books. If I start a book and get bored or frustrated with it, there are plenty of books that are likely to be better to replace it. Non-fiction is more likely to get set aside unfinished because I tend to buy it because the topic looks interesting and writing about an interesting topic doesn't necessarily give the author good writing skills.