I ask because I tend to jump off a book if It’s not grabbing me, which at times limits me with regards to what I’m reading.
Does it matter? Is it something I should try to push past or am I overthinking this and should just enjoy what I enjoy?
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Pushing through a book that is not working is detrimental to every party involved - the author, the book itself, and primarily to yourself and your time. You should never do that.
I have a hard time making time for reading, so I want that time to count. I don’t let myself get caught up in a sunk cost fallacy and will just move onto another book.
Not every book will be enjoyed by every reader. I DNF once I realize the book is just not my cup of tea. I just checked and of the 15 books I started this year, I dropped 4 at some point. Sometimes I hate-read a book. That happens when I find the book annoying, but it still has something to keep me going on. I am enjoying it to some degree, while also being angry at it.
In any case, if reading the book feels like a drag, close it and open another book. Maybe you abandon the book forever, maybe you pick it up a year from now and plow through it. Both are fine.
I skip to the last chapter, and if I don’t understand it, keep skipping back until I do. Or just put it down for a couple of weeks.
If it’s fiction, you are basically murdering all your head space imaginings of the charactors, carelessly cutting them down mid stride before their time. Only a pure psychopath could do this.
I don’t.
I’ve even read philosophical works that go against what I think and feel and spend the entire time arguing with someone who has probably been dead for hundreds of years.
But I enjoy that from time to time to keep my mind sharp.
No point in reading something that doesn’t grab you and resonate with you. Life is too short to put myself through that.
Enjoy what you enjoy—life’s too short and there are too many other books out there to waste time on what you don’t enjoy! I have no qualms about not finishing a book, no matter how far along I’ve gotten. I’ve been known to skip to the last chapter or last few pages just to see how it ends, then move on.
On the other hand, for books that you have to read (for school, e.g.) set a goal of X pages per day, and reward yourself when you make the goal. I also find it helps to read more interactively: take notes, argue with the author, think about what you read and whether it’s total b.s. or whether there was anything, however small, of value in it.
Audiobooks help me there sometimes. Most of the time I enjoy them for the performance and because I can “read” while driving or working on projects, but it also helps with slow spots in some books that are otherwise worth reading.
That said, I would not suffer through 40 hours of dislike, it’s more for that occasional 2 hour lull that might have caused me to put the paperback down and not pick it up again.
Okay real answer here, not just “don’t.”
You can read it with the goal of having a solid understanding of why you think it’s bad, in a way that can be communicated to other people. Having that kind of understanding is better than not, and it’ll make it so that you have a better perspective on what you do like, and why you like it.
Sunk Cost Fallacy. Shelve that sum’bitch and don’t look back.
The only time I read books I don’t like is when I dislike them so much that I want to be able bitch about em on the internet without someone telling me my opinion is invalid because I didn’t finish em.
Other than that, I just drop 'em.
Spite reading, love it.
I’m reading the 3rd book in the Mistborn series and I’m about 2/3rds done and am struggling. I just find the characters flat, but my friend keeps telling me to just finish it so the “better books” in the Sanderson universe will make sense. Ugh.
honestly, mistborn isn’t very good and there is no reason you can’t just immediately jump on stormlight. yes, there are tons of references and characters which does make stormlight awesome because you’ll go “omg no way! it’s HIM!”, but it isn’t strictly necessary because stormlight doesn’t actually assume you’ve read the previous cosmere books (few exceptions where brandon just teases too much it takes away from the plot, i.e. the mysterious scarf wearing woman. yes, we get it, it’s the princess from warbreaker, and she’s looking for one of the gods from warbreaker, that we’re also familiar with, and the god in turn is looking for his weapon). but ultimately these characters have their own story arcs and most of them aren’t immediately important to the plot and more like easter eggs.
now, i should point out that … i really don’t care for mistborn. and for now, it doesn’t matter. but after the next stormlight book, there will be an in-world timeskip, and then another 3-6 mistborn books, and then both the mistborn series and the stormlight series become one joint series.
but there is really no reason to read stormlight before mistborn in its current state because the only real way you’ll know for sure one of the hidden characters in stormlight is a particularly well loved character from mistborn is if you read the wiki. there is also a guest appearance of another character in i think the first book but it doesn’t make sense in the timeline and it’s inconsequential to the plot in every way.
I really enjoyed the first 3 Mistborn, though I’ll admit the third was the weakest of them. I’m not sure why you need to have read them for the other stuff, though. I’ve enjoyed a lot of his works, but the magic systems are quite different between them, despite apparently being in the same universe. (Which I didn’t realize until I’d read a lot of his books.)
Well that is good to know! Thank you!
well for one thing, one of the big bads in stormlight happens to die in mistborn.
Often, I don’t. If I think there is a good chance of a payoff, though… I start skimming the crap. I’ve learned to skim through stuff until something of import comes up, and then I step back a couple paragraphs and start reading again.
I don’t know how you’d learn this, but I learned it back in high school when I needed to find information in the textbook quickly, but couldn’t afford to actually read every page on the way. It was massively successful back then, and now both.
If after skimming like 1/4 of a book I haven’t found anything interesting again, I almost always quit, though. It’s really unlikely that a book with that much content that I don’t care about will have anything that I value later.
That said… I have skimmed entire books on re-read. Some of the middle Wheel of Time books, for example. And some were so bad that I just read a summary, instead of skimming. But I like the first books enough that it was worth it for the ending, which was decent, but not mind-blowing like I’d hoped. (I “re-read” them when the later books finally came out and I wanted a refresher.)
Oh Wheel of Time. I love them for the most part, but I just couldn’t care less about a whole book of Elaine playing politics for the Lion Throne. Then there was the book that was mostly just devoted to taking care of a drought. I get the latter is the Dark One’s shadow falling on the world and all, but the boredom it invoked felt like the Dark One’s shadow on my mind.
I’ve been stuck in Winter’s Heart for months, maybe even approaching a year now. I might finish it by the time i have grandkids.
That is certainly the worst of “the slog”. I would just get an audiobook version and listen to it while you exercise, eat, or do other such tasks.
I used to do this but I forgot I did it.
Whenever I’ve pushed through and attempted to finish a book that I do not enjoy, I end up shelving reading as a hobby for a long period of time.
So I decided to just stop trying and if I don’t enjoy them, I stop. There are too many good books to read out there for me to try to force feed one to myself.
Exactly. Life is too short to read a boring book. I paid for an audiobook on the Celts, thinking I would learn something about them. I got about a third of the way through and realized I was barely absorbing anything because the author had a boring as fuck style. Don’t give in to the sunk cost fallacy of having spent time and perhaps money on a book.
