What do you do when you're in the middle of a book you don't like?

[kev67]

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.

[cacian]

I stop reading it.
there is no other way around it.

[Lokasenna]

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.

[Poetaster]

I always try to finish everything I read, I don't always though.

[Paulclem]

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.

[Frostball]

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.

[YesNo]

I've stopped reading more books than I've completed so I have no problem with stopping.

[JBI]

Put it down or appeal to authority and finish it.

[Marbles]

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.

[Sospira]

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.

[Emil Miller]

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.

[sandy14]

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.

[wordeater]

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.

[Eiseabhal]

Bin it. Charity shop it. Put it down "temporarily".