At what point do you decide it is time to give up on a book?

[Dark Muse]

Though it is not often that I will quit a book after I started it, it has been known to happen a few times before, and I am currently reading this book right now, called Under the Sun of Satan, and the prologue was really quite good, and I found to be rather engaging, and when I first started reading the book I was rather enjoying it. But now that I have moved into the first chapter of the book, it has come to a sudden halt. I have been really struggling to try and get through it, and find my mind often starts wandering while I am trying to read, and I have to force myself to pick it up again and never can get very far before just putting it back down.

So I have more than once contemplated the idea of just throwing it aside and being done with it, but I am on the fence because it did start off so well, a part of me wonders if I ought to get through this chapter and wait to see if it does pick up again in the proceeding chapters.

At what point do you decide you have given a book a fair enough opportunity before you decide it really is not worth anymore of your time? How do you decide when it is time to just give up on a book?

For me it is never an easy decision to make.

[DanielBenoit]

Yeah same with me too. As a matter of fact, I don't think I've ever stopped in the middle of a novel, I usually just toughen it out and torture myself for no good reason.

So I suppose I can't help you there :lol: But I do think that if you are only on chapter one that you should give the book a little more time, and if it just doesn't come to life for you, then just drop it. I remember disliking Euripides and hating myself for it. I suppose that even the greatest works of literature don't can't fit all tastes.

If it encourages you, I read somewhere that Tolstoy was so bored with Crime and Punishment that he just stopped reading halfway through. Now I could be completely wrong and mistaken, but I remember reading it somewhere. . . .

[kiki1982]

That is an interesting topic because I am at the same point as you, actually...

I am reading The Mill on the Floss and I was really looking forward to it. But it is so amazingly slow and Eliot leaves so little to the reader's thoughts, that I have lost all interest. I am not even half-way and I really get courage to read on, but it just does not seem to prickle my interest.

The only thing is that I will never try it again if I put it away...

Does The Mill on the Floss become more interesting once the children's times are over or does it stay like 'I will tell you what they feel and leave nothing to your imagination'? I would so much like to read it, but I just... I also do not like Dickens: too much repetition and not enough mystery (why does a character think like this?). It's maybe that? Perhaps I do not like Realism (that is what Eliot is, sin't it?).

I usually never put anything down (only rarely came across that feeling). I never lose interest. Stopping readng something is kind of failure to me... Alhough, TMotF will become a failure unless someone comes up with a bloody good argument.

Anyone advice, apart from force oneself to read one chapter a day?

[MarkBastable]

About five hundred words in.

[Dark Muse]

If it encourages you, I read somewhere that Tolstoy was so bored with Crime and Punishment that he just stopped reading halfway through. Now I could be completely wrong and mistaken, but I remember reading it somewhere. . . .

Haha that is funny, if it is true.

Yes, I suppose I will struggle my way through this chapter, and hope I get over this bump and that it does pick up again after I get through this part of it.

Though if it continues on in this way, I might not have will enough to continue becasue I keep thinking of better things I could be reading instead.

[Modest Proposal]

I pretty much force myself through something that I've started, but rarely read something on impulse. "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" was one of my first impulse buys, the cover, the synopsis and the gold emblem reading Pulizer--at a time when I didn't even know what it signified--caused me to go out on a limb. It was one of the first books I considered abandoning. I didn't enjoy it per se, but am surprised at how often I think about it years later. I find it is almost always better just to finish the book unless it is in some serious way disturbing you or the author is too-severly pressing something--the author mind you not a character--offensive.

Oh I gave up on "The Da Vinci Code" when I was 18 but then picked it back up at 21 just so I didn't have an unfinished book on my shelf. I am also anal about owning books that I haven't read.

[papayahed]

If I'm having a hard time with a book I quit it as soon as I think it's chore to read it, why waste the time slogging through it when you could be reading something good but usually if i bought it I'll keep it on the shelf and try to revisit it later.

[Dinkleberry2010]

There are only two books that I started reading and did not finish--one was a book about Charles Wesley, and the other was It by Stephen King. The book about Wesley was so dull and badly written I couldn't stand it--I read about twenty pages and gave up on it. I read fifty pages of It and stopped reading because it seemed that all that King was doing was describing a group of characters. About a year later I went back and forced myself to read King's book. It turned out to be a pretty good book, but the first fifty pages are bad.

[Paulclem]

That is an interesting topic because I am at the same point as you, actually...

I am reading The Mill on the Floss and I was really looking forward to it. But it is so amazingly slow and Eliot leaves so little to the reader's thoughts, that I have lost all interest. I am not even half-way and I really get courage to read on, but it just does not seem to prickle my interest.

The only thing is that I will never try it again if I put it away...

Does The Mill on the Floss become more interesting once the children's times are over or does it stay like 'I will tell you what they feel and leave nothing to your imagination'? I would so much like to read it, but I just... I also do not like Dickens: too much repetition and not enough mystery (why does a character think like this?). It's maybe that? Perhaps I do not like Realism (that is what Eliot is, sin't it?).

I usually never put anything down (only rarely came across that feeling). I never lose interest. Stopping readng something is kind of failure to me... Alhough, TMotF will become a failure unless someone comes up with a bloody good argument.

Anyone advice, apart from force oneself to read one chapter a day?

I gave up on The Mill On the Floss in chapter One. I have no regrets about it, or any other book have given up on. Life's too short, and there are some great reads.

I dislike lists - unless it's a required study list - (in fact the required study list is the only way I would ever have got through some books) - but I prefer to carefully choose what I really want to read. There are many factors to reading- mood, time of year, busyness of job, an occaisional genre craving such as a sci fi actioner or a thriller. I would not have completed the stifling Crime and Punishment without it being on my reading list at uni, yet I know that I have books that I'm resting that I wll return to when I'm in the mood. I don't need the tyranny of a reading list, and I wouldn't think twice about ditching a book that was rubbish or boring.

[shortstoryfan]

Kiki,

Does Eliot use free indirect discourse? I know a lot of people who find the technique really frustrating to read.

[Dark Muse]

I find this interesting as I am currently reading Middlemarch by Eliot and quite enjoying it, and I was rather drawn into her prose within Middlemarch, I wonder if Mill and Floss is just written quite differently than Middlemarch.

[The Comedian]

Fifty pages. I give a book fifty pages to get me hooked. If it doesn't then, it's back to the library with you!

[Silas Thorne]

If there are too many important characters in a novel, and I forget who some of them are, sometimes I give up out of frustration, since I don't want to go thumbing back through pages I have read.

[dfloyd]

classics ... ancient, since the printing press, or modern and post modern. I did stop reading To The Light House by Virginia Woolf. In my opinion, the books these others have mentioned are not bsd books. They are just beyond the reader's immediate capability. I've never taken a course in literature so I've had to learn on my own. When I first started reading after college, years ago, I had the same problems others are having. But a good sense of grammar and vocabulary can help overcome reader deficiencies. Being bored or not understanding Dickens, Eliot, Trollope, Thackery etc is the fault of the reader. He/she is not ready to digest certain works. And some preperation is necessary for true reading enjoyment. Take it from me. I didn't like Dickens oe Eliot or many others, but I forced myself to read them; then I started to get more and more proficient. Reading classics is a struggle at first: I've been there. But it is so rewarding to have the ability to read about what you want because you have prepared yourself. I hated Silas Marner the first time through, but now I have read just about all of Eliot and realize how great a writer she is. Mill on the Floss is an excellent book, but not to those who aren't prepared to read it.

Many of the 19th century novels have been dramatized by Masterpiece Theatre. I've watched Mill on the Floss and it does help your reading of the novel. Most good libraries have dvds for the Masterpiece Theatre dramatizations.

[Dark Muse]

classics ... ancient, since the printing press, or modern and post modern. I did stop reading To The Light House by Virginia Woolf. In my opinion, the books these others have mentioned are not bsd books. They are just beyond the reader's immediate capability. I've never taken a course in literature so I've had to learn on my own. When I first started reading after college, years ago, I had the same problems others are having. But a good sense of grammar and vocabulary can help overcome reader deficiencies. Being bored or not understanding Dickens, Eliot, Trollope, Thackery etc is the fault of the reader. He/she is not ready to digest certain works. And some preperation is necessary for true reading enjoyment. Take it from me. I didn't like Dickens oe Eliot or many others, but I forced myself to read them; then I started to get more and more proficient. Reading classics is a struggle at first: I've been there. But it is so rewarding to have the ability to read about what you want because you have prepared yourself. I hated Silas Marner the first time through, but now I have read just about all of Eliot and realize how great a writer she is. Mill on the Floss is an excellent book, but not to those who aren't prepared to read it.

I think that is a bit harsh and presumptuous, perhaps in some cases there is some truth but I do not think it always holds. I believe that a person can simply find the particular style or narrative technique within a story to not be to their personal taste, or the content of the story itself to disagree with them. This does not by default mean they are incapable of understanding it, just because they dislike it.

As well just because a work is a classic does not mean that anyone who doesn't like it, is simply not intelligent enough to appreciate it or that because something is a classic that by default means everyone who reads it must love it.

You may think a particular author is great, but just because other people disagree does not mean they are less intelligent and not as intellectual as you are.

[kiki1982]

classics ... ancient, since the printing press, or modern and post modern. I did stop reading To The Light House by Virginia Woolf. In my opinion, the books these others have mentioned are not bsd books. They are just beyond the reader's immediate capability. I've never taken a course in literature so I've had to learn on my own. When I first started reading after college, years ago, I had the same problems others are having. But a good sense of grammar and vocabulary can help overcome reader deficiencies. Being bored or not understanding Dickens, Eliot, Trollope, Thackery etc is the fault of the reader. He/she is not ready to digest certain works. And some preperation is necessary for true reading enjoyment. Take it from me. I didn't like Dickens oe Eliot or many others, but I forced myself to read them; then I started to get more and more proficient. Reading classics is a struggle at first: I've been there. But it is so rewarding to have the ability to read about what you want because you have prepared yourself. I hated Silas Marner the first time through, but now I have read just about all of Eliot and realize how great a writer she is. Mill on the Floss is an excellent book, but not to those who aren't prepared to read it.

Many of the 19th century novels have been dramatized by Masterpiece Theatre. I've watched Mill on the Floss and it does help your reading of the novel. Most good libraries have dvds for the Masterpiece Theatre dramatizations.

I agree with Dark Muse. Why would it depnd upon the fact if people understand or not that they like something or not? There are more difficult writers I have understood and read with great enjoyment.

To me, Dickens is dull because (he also) does not leave anything to the reader's imagination. Do we really want to know all the thoughts of a character? I would like to have something that leaves it to me... It does not even need to be the characters, it can be something else. But Eliot, and Dicksns are so maticulousthat they leave nothing to be desired. Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed all adaptations of his work, so it is not lack of understanding it is just his very long, very precise style of writing that gets to me after I am halfway. Not to mention his ridiculous description of Venice in Little Dorrit. He did spent time there, but to me, that city lost all its true beauty, all its truthfulness, all its 'Italian-city'-busstle (which must have been great at the time). And I have spent a lot of time there and know a lot about its history... It seemed to be reduced to a fake place with boats. We culd say that now, but then, with its population of more than 100,000, it was not like that.

The first chapter of The Mill on the Floss was a disappointment. Why? Because it kept going. It was weird, but not weird enough to tickle the interest. Too long. Once one gets into the story with its great characters, Eliot interupts it for something of her own continuously. And so, it is (to me) like a car only in first gear. It never gets driving because it is not allowed to.

@Shortstoryfan:

That can well be that she uses free indirect discourse... Now you say it. I have enjoyed it before in Austen's work.

[Mrig]

Thought I have rarely done that, I feel like giving up reading a book when the book stops talking to me... It doesn't mean when the narration gets slow.....just that when 'you redaing a book' and book talking to you' goes as a parallel activity like you read the book and you want the book to talk to you and it just dosent happen!


But I respect each writing as long as i find it genuine and after all we cant blame the book if we dont like it!

[Page Turner]

Fifty pages. I give a book fifty pages to get me hooked. If it doesn't then, it's back to the library with you!

That's my rule too. I've given a few books more time but they have rarely been worth it. Like the saying goes: So many books, so little time.

[Paulclem]

I find this interesting as I am currently reading Middlemarch by Eliot and quite enjoying it, and I was rather drawn into her prose within Middlemarch, I wonder if Mill and Floss is just written quite differently than Middlemarch.

I liked Silas Marner and Scenes from a Clerical Life by Eliot, but not The Mill... I dislike Austen too, I don't find the literatre of manners interesting, though I do appreciate that they are classics. Its not the way it's written Shortstoryfan - more the subject.

I'm with The Comedian on the giving up period.

[Abdiel]

I'd say when the tears start flowing it's time to stop reading.

I've had to read some books for university where I was so frustrated by what I was reading that I just wanted to tear the book in half and throw it at the wall.

But I didn't Because that'd be disrespecting a book--no matter how much it sucked.

[Jozanny]

I do not abandon a book often, and when I do they are mainly contemporary, but I have learned that abandonment is perfectly acceptable.

[Inka]

I remember giving up on a book because the writer proved to be a homosexual (e.g. gay), moreover he exposed his likings on the paper. While reading I couldn't get rid of the feeling of being dirty so that I wanted to take a good shower

Jozanny
yes, it's acceptable especially if you're reading a tabloid detective :)

[OrphanPip]

(e.g. gay)


As opposed to a lesbian... I don't think the world homosexual really needs explication.

Possibly one of the worst reasons for giving up a book I've heard. It's like someone getting half way through The Colour Purple and dropping the book because they realized Alice Walker is African American.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I don't often give up on books, but when I do I don't worry too much about it, it depends on what it is though. If I am reading contemporary stuff, which is not that often or as often as I should or can, you can usually get a feel for the quality within 10/20 pages, and if I consider it inferior I will dump it shortly after this, as a person would a newspaper.

The vast majority of my books though are not contemporary which has to do with my personal interest and my university reading lists, which are varied of course but are less likely to be contemporary unless it is being studied as a postmodern text or something else.

For leisure, if I do leave a book to one side it is with the perfect understanding that this is not a fault of myself or the text in question.


I remember giving up on a book because the writer proved to be a homosexual (e.g. gay), moreover he exposed his likings on the paper. While reading I couldn't get rid of the feeling of being dirty so that I wanted to take a good shower


:eek::brickwall

Sometimes I just despair of humanity...

[neilgee]

Like so many people have already said I rarely give up on a book although astonishingly there are two mentioned on this one thread that I had given up on and then went back to and enjoyed, namely The Mill on the Floss, and To the Lighthouse. The Satanic Verses I also got about 30 pages into then left it but came back to it when I understood a little more about "Magic realism" and it ended up being one of my all time favourites.

Adam Bede was an earlier Eliot novel and I think she does write more confidently in the next one, Floss, but without getting into a debate on the attractiveness or otherwise of realism in literature with Kiki I have to say I loved them both. Silas Marner might suit you much better Kiki because it is much shorter and cuts out alot of that psychological insight that you don't like.

I'm sorry Dark Muse I can't say whether Floss is like Middlemarch as I havn't got round to that one yet. I happened to pick up Floss for a quid or something about 15 years ago [it was part of the "Penguin Classics" series of cheap books] and when I did eventually get round to enjoying it earlier this year and realised it was an early novel I decided to try and read them in something like chronological order so I'll probably get round to Middlemarch sometime next year.

[kiki1982]

I think it is now growing a little on me now that I am past the children's years. Maybe the schoolyears were too black-and-white for an adult frame of mind (I didn't like youth literature either when I was supposed to and preferred more serious things for adults).

Maybe I'll still plough through.

Almost 200 pages into it...

Without getting into a debate (everyone has his own taste), does Realism tend to address psychology in a very meticulous manner? Or does it depend on the writer?
I am one of the few who likes Naturalism despite its bleak and constantly depressing atmopsphere. I am a great fan of Romanticism, but I am at a loss at what is wrong with Realism for me...

[Kidijs]

I just give up on the book if I get a bad feeling when remembering that I'm still reading it.

[JuniperWoolf]

I remember giving up on a book because the writer proved to be a homosexual (e.g. gay), moreover he exposed his likings on the paper. While reading I couldn't get rid of the feeling of being dirty so that I wanted to take a good shower

:lol: You suck.

[IceM]

I give up about at about 1/5 - 1/7 of the way through. So, if Candide sucks 20 pages in, which it did, I'd give up.

I try to tough it out most of the time though.

[ForKnowledge]

classics ... ancient, since the printing press, or modern and post modern. I did stop reading To The Light House by Virginia Woolf. In my opinion, the books these others have mentioned are not bsd books. They are just beyond the reader's immediate capability. I've never taken a course in literature so I've had to learn on my own. When I first started reading after college, years ago, I had the same problems others are having. But a good sense of grammar and vocabulary can help overcome reader deficiencies. Being bored or not understanding Dickens, Eliot, Trollope, Thackery etc is the fault of the reader. He/she is not ready to digest certain works. And some preperation is necessary for true reading enjoyment. Take it from me. I didn't like Dickens oe Eliot or many others, but I forced myself to read them; then I started to get more and more proficient. Reading classics is a struggle at first: I've been there. But it is so rewarding to have the ability to read about what you want because you have prepared yourself. I hated Silas Marner the first time through, but now I have read just about all of Eliot and realize how great a writer she is. Mill on the Floss is an excellent book, but not to those who aren't prepared to read it.

Many of the 19th century novels have been dramatized by Masterpiece Theatre. I've watched Mill on the Floss and it does help your reading of the novel. Most good libraries have dvds for the Masterpiece Theatre dramatizations.

I could be wrong but I think some authors are just boring to certain people, I read everything I can get my hands on from conrad,joyce,faulkner, and miller to stephen king and louis lamour. I don't think you have "reader deficiencies" if you don't appreciate dickens or eliot. I'm not a fan of either and I think i'm ready to digest just about anything.

[neilgee]

Without getting into a debate (everyone has his own taste), does Realism tend to address psychology in a very meticulous manner? Or does it depend on the writer?
I am one of the few who likes Naturalism despite its bleak and constantly depressing atmopsphere. I am a great fan of Romanticism, but I am at a loss at what is wrong with Realism for me...

George Eliot is noted for her meticulous insight into what makes her characters tick, it is one of the main reasons why her novels are still critically acclaimed. However I'm not really sure what you mean by realism. All these different genres confuse me:blush: I'm not sure what you mean by Naturalism either. Who do you regard as a naturalist writer?