I have been reading How Green Was My Valley at about a chapter a day. It's tripe, and I still have more than half of it left to read.
Stop reading it - life's too short.
Slog on to the end - then you can tick it off
Finish it quickly - get it over with
Read it in background mode - eventually, it will be read
Put it down - maybe you'll pick it up again, maybe you won't
I have been reading How Green Was My Valley at about a chapter a day. It's tripe, and I still have more than half of it left to read.
Last edited by kev67; 10-30-2014 at 04:08 PM.
According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
Charles Dickens, by George Orwell
I stop reading it.
there is no other way around it.
Last edited by cacian; 10-30-2014 at 04:14 PM.
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
I used to hate giving up on books. Now I'm so busy, and my reading-for-pleasure time so limited, that I simply have to abandon books I'm not enjoying.
"I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche
I always try to finish everything I read, I don't always though.
'So - this is where we stand. Win all, lose all,
we have come to this: the crisis of our lives'
I'd pack it in without a second thought. Life's too short to read all the stuff you want to read let alone stuff you don't.
I read through, so I can check it off. I'm a completionist, and I just want to be able to say "I've read X" without any deceit.
I've stopped reading more books than I've completed so I have no problem with stopping.
Last edited by YesNo; 10-30-2014 at 08:49 PM.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
Put it down or appeal to authority and finish it.
I slow down, take frequent breaks, curse and hate, pick up and read, and close again; and in the meantime read something interesting and enjoyable; pick up the book again, go through the pain of reading a few more pages, and take a break again. It goes on like this till I am subjected to the immense pleasure of having reached the last 50, last 25,....., last 5, and the last page of the book!
Do as I might, if I have made up my mind to read it to the end, I will read it to the end, if only to again authority to tell my friends how much I disliked it, or to review it.
But you, cloudless girl, question of smoke, corn tassel
You were what the wind was making with illuminated leaves.
ah, I can say nothing! You were made of everything.
_Pablo Neruda
The only books I've ever given up on are 'Mansfield Park,' by Jane Austen, 'Mrs Dalloway,' by Virginia Woolfe, and the Lord of The Rings Trilogy by Tolkien. I have enjoyed other books by the same authors but the ones I gave up on just felt like a waste of my time. The Lord of the Rings disappointingly didn't seem like literature to me, but I didn't get very far with it. The heroine of the Austen book, Fanny Price, was just wimpy and lame, and also her name is off-putting...as for the Virginia Woolfe one, just couldn't get on with the stream of consciousness thing, it felt like jelly. I might at some point give that one another go.
I would rather re-read a book that I have enjoyed than persevere with one that I am not enjoying. The last book I attempted was Compton Mackenzie's 'Carnival' , which is a Bildungsroman narrating the life of a working class girl's rise in the English theatre of the early 20th century. Written in 1912, it was already an oft told tale but I hadn't read anything by the author and decided to have a stab at it because Mackenzie was an interesting character in his own right. By page 102 of the novel's 514 pp. I'd had enough because, although quite well-written, the story's contrivance was too obvious and passages such as: 'Jenny had deliciously slim legs and a figure as lithe as a hazel wand. Her almond eyes were of some fantastic shade of sapphire-blue with deep grey twilights in them and sea-green laughter.' betray both the writer's lack of discretion and the overblown style of the period in which it was written.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
I have a one hundred page rule. If I've got to page 100 and I'm not enjoying it, I'll stop and give the book to Oxfam.
Sometimes I take a pile of books from the library. I don't feel obliged to read all of them completely. You can always go back later if you regret not finishing it.
If I get to about halfway and I don't want to put too much time in it,but still want to know how it ends, I start reading diagonally, about 100 pages an hour.
Last edited by wordeater; 11-01-2014 at 03:55 AM.
Bin it. Charity shop it. Put it down "temporarily".
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