(Booking Through Thursday is a blog that poses a reading related question every Thursday)Booking Through Thursday's question May 6, 2010:
So … you’re halfway through a book and you’re hating it. It’s boring. It’s trite. It’s badly written. But … you’ve invested all this time to reading the first half.
What do you do? Read the second half? Just to finish out the story? Find out what happens? Or, cut your losses and dump the second half?
My response:If you know me you know the answer to this question. FINISH IT! If I don't like it after a few pages (say 10) I will put it down, but if I've already made my way through half of it-I will struggle to the bitter end. I do tend to read quickly so this doesn't usually take away from the other books I want to read. I will admit, that on occasion I may switch to "skimming" the rest rather than reading it word-for-word. I always convince myself that I need to give it a chance to redeem itself-because sometimes it's the ending of the book that makes it brilliant. Sometimes.
The only book that I can think of that I read about half way through and COULD NOT finish (even if my life depended on it I wouldn't even try again) was One Hundred Years of Solitude. There were too many characters, and too many of them had similar if not the same names, I couldn't keep things straight. So I quit!
How about you?
(Mom i think you already answered this in a comment you left awhile ago-but please feel free to write it here too!)
Thanks Sara I think I said the same thing you did. If I didn't like it I would put it away for a time and sometimes it was a year or more. I found that after that long I could read it again and I felt that it was because I was in a different space in my life and was possibly more open to that book at the time rather than earlier. But, I must say that there are a few books I have tried to read again and I just put them away and will probably not read them ever! Life's too short there are so many books to read and I don't feel guilty not reading something I am not enjoying.
ReplyDeleteI don't read quickly, nor do I read often so if I'm not into it I'd rather spend my time reading something I'm enjoying!
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