Thursday, August 26, 2010

Booking Through Thursday: August 26, 2010

Booking Through Thursday is a weekly bookish meme. Anyone can play along! Just comment to the following: 
If you’re not enjoying a book, will you stop mid-way? Or do you push through to the end? What makes you decide to stop?

If I am not enjoying a book, I stop a lot sooner than half-way. I usually give a book a few pages to grab my attention. If it fails, I set it aside and try something else. I have over 800 books on my TBR stack currently either in physical form or on my Kindle. I also read for pleasure. It is not a pleasure if I am not enjoying a book. 


Here are some things that will stop me from reading a book:

  • writing style - Do I have to stop and re-parse sentences before they make sense to me? Is the style overly "cute"? Did the author fall in love with their thesaurus? I avoid both stream of consciousness and over-abundance of dialect in the books I choose.
  • characters - Can I identify in some way with the main character? Is the character interesting to me? Are there interesting and well-developed secondary characters?
  • story - Is the author getting into actually telling a story or spending huge amounts of words setting up the story? Give me action and start it NOW. Something needs to happen. Is there a problem that needs to be solved?

Now, all of these things are very subjective. I story that I can't connect to might well be someone else's favorite book of all time. I also have to note that I am a mood reader. A book may be perfectly wonderful but I am not in the mood for it. Sometimes I want something light and happy; sometimes I want something darker or requiring more thought. In most cases, I give a book more than one try before I abandon it for good and move it along to find it a good home.


If you have thoughts on the topic I would love to hear them. Write a post and link it here. And, good luck! I hope the book you are reading now is not one that you will give up on.

4 comments:

  1. You made some good points!

    Frankly, I think why should I waste time reading something I don't like when there are so many more to choose from..

    Here is my BTT: Giving Up post!

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  2. I think I have only had the heart to give up a book 3 times. I really wish I had it in me to have put more down that. I have seriously read books disliking them more and more as they have gone along. I need to develop a 50 page rule because I am pretty sure I don't give it up based on time put in already.

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  3. Yes, too much dialect will kill my interest in a book faster than just about anything. And I'm a mood reader, too, although I usually stick to the same few genres.

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  4. You always say everything so clearly - I can't hardly think things through as thoroughly as you can put it on paper! Nice post!

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