Reading above and beyond the call of duty?

[didiervg]

I don't know what it is but I will very rarely stop reading a book before I've reached the end. Even if halfway I'm bored to death I will keep at it, hoping that somehow on the next page the story will pick up, the characters come alive, ...

What do you do: finish what you've started or pick up another book?

The only book I can recall I've stopped reading after about a hundred pages or so was Peter Carey's Illywhacker (which I'd started because I liked Jack Maggs).

[Zooey]

I trudge through it to the bitter end. I'm a completist- once I start a book (or a movie), I have to finish it!

I feel like I wont have the grounds to argue about it if I ever would need to, and if I've already put the effort into it, I might as well stick it out. And, like you say, there's always that hope that something will suddenly spark in just that next paragraph or page or chapter...

[Eric, son of Chuck]

I think the only book I've started and left was "The High King." I feel bad, so many people like it. Then again, I was in grade 6 when I tried. I think I own it...

[apstudent]

I think that it is the author's job to catch your attention in the beginning. Chances are, if you are not interested int the plot creation at the beginning, it is not worth sticking through a book that you will not enjoy.
-?

[baddad]

I have personally read over 5000 books of one kind or another so far in my life. The range and genre of this total is wider than even I would have chosen, but I am DRIVEN to read. Many of these books have, of course,been drivel, quickly forgotten, but I read each one completely, even the jacket, and publishing info. There is only one book in my entire life, so far, that I have failed to finish........(place drum roll here)...one of the Russian classics...........War and Peace! That book made me want to bang my head against a wall........repeatedly. I got as far as page 782 or somewhere there abouts .....and then decided to save the headbanging for some decent Rock N' Roll occasion........the book sits and ages, taunts me, but I'd rather stab it than read it.....HOWEVER, I don't feel I can judge a book until I finish it. Only then can I praise it or fling it across the room in disgust....

[Monica]

Usually I try to finish the book I started reading. As far as I remember I have never finished reading two books: Nostromo by Conrad and Seymour: An Introduction by Salinger.

[chrissy]

Yeah I've attempted Nostromo twice and I can't get throught it. I don't know why I can't get into that one. I even made it through one Russian classic The Idiot, as much as I found it bewildering and laboured.
I can easily stop watching a movie if I;m not enjoying it, I just don't see the point to go on, but with a book it's more a curiosity thing. If a book sucks I want to know what sucks about it from beginning to end. Stupid isn't it?

[Capnplank]

I think it took three attempts before I made it through Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", having gotten halfway through and quitting the previous times. I'm still not sure if it was worth it, other than that I now know not to ever read it again.
It's been two or so attempts at Salinger's "Franny and Zooey", and I still haven't finished that one.
Usually I struggle in vain until I finish a book though, once I've gotten through at least a few pages, even if it takes several months of agony.

[Koa]

Until a few years ago I could say I had never left a book halfway through...even when I hated it. But then I started doing it, even if just in rare cases...they might be like 5 at this point (too lazy to do some brainstorming) so I can proudly say with despise 'it's one of the rare books I havent finished' :D I even got to the end of War&Peace, it wasn't easy...

[Raven]

I will generally make my way all the way through, but I will read another book while I'm doing it... I usually have three or four books on the go at once anyways... That way, when I get bored with one, I start reading another, and go back to the first in a couple of days.

[Kiwi Shelf]

There are a couple of books that I never made my way through, but I always go back and try again. And, sometimes again...