Finishing books [S. Worthen | Weblog]

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From an article about books least likely to be finished by Britons, comment section:

How can someone NOT finish a book? Surely when you open a book and decide to read it you make a commitment to read it through to the end. I read every day and have NEVER NOT FINISHED A BOOK.

NOTE: Make that 1 is "never finish".

[Poll #948498]

Edited: Ah, the ineditability of polls. It occurs to me that I am least likely to finish non-fiction, not because it isn't well-written, but because finishing isn't the point. Reading particular sections relevant to what I'm studying is much more likely to be the point. Also, spoilers sometimes kill a book for me - not often, but sometimes. Spoilers are why I haven't finished Life of Pi.

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There are 34 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

I don't see opening a book as a commitment to finish it. I figure life is too short, and I have too many books on my to-read shelf, to persist with struggling through something that turns out to be boring or especially bad (though I have a fair tolerance for moderately bad).

With non-fiction books and collections of short stories, I often skim and read just the parts I'm most interested in. With novels, if I find I'm really not interested in the plot or characters, I'll generally skip to the end and read that, then put it aside - because, as a plot-junkie, I find it very hard not to know what happens, even in a crappy book.

There are also a few books on my shelf that I know I've not finished, not out of any particular dislike, but just a vague lack of enthusiasm to continue, combined with too many more exciting books to read instead. I generally do eventually pick those up and finish them, but it may take years.

I am the QUEEN of not finishing non-fiction books. I easily lose interest or get distracted when there is no real plot to follow through to the end.

I use non-fiction books more often than I read them from cover to cover. The exceptions are books by authors I admire and enjoy, books that will be useful to me from pillar to post, and microhistory, which I devour the same way I do fiction. I so loves me a microhistory.

I get a lot of book recommendations, and my fiction/leisure reading time is short (bedtime reading), so if a book doesn't grab me in the first 50 pages, I'm unlikely to keep wasting my time on it.

Sometimes I'll try again when I think it might be the right time for a certain book. I started Gravity's Rainbow about 20 times before I finally got past the first few pages. It turned out that having a temp of 102 and a mild case of fevered delerium was the trick (I was quite ill when I read it).

I use non-fiction books more often than I read them from cover to cover.

The more I think about the non-fiction category, the more complicated this whole subject becomes. Some people really do read encyclopedias and dictionaries and guide books from cover-to-cover. But very few of them were written with that style of reading even in mind.

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Sure. And for me, the using rather than cover-to-cover reading applies to all kinds of non-fic, not just reference books. I think I've read all of Flint's Rise of Magic at this point, but it was via a workmanlike bopping around, a reading practice that was highly constructed and intentional (tell me about demons; tell me about Isidore of Seville; tell me about catoptromancy) rather than sustained from 1-400. I rarely read nonfiction in one smooth gesture, unless I'm trying to follow an argument (as in the case of Eisenstein, for example).

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I see no reason to finish a bad book, or one I just don't like. If it's non-fiction I need to read, then I'll doggedly push my way through ... but then, that's what gutting is for, isn't it? Probably the only exception is series fiction where there is a defined end. Hence the fact that I shall finish G.R.R. Martin's Fire and Ice series, even though books three and four have thoroughly pissed me off. I feel like I have invested enough time that it doesn't make sense at this point to just stop. It's kind of like a dysfunctional marriage at this point, though. Giving it one more try, even though you know it's not really going to get better, and just hoping it won't get worse.

HA, I was sooo pissed when I figured out that book three was not the end. I had waited until I thought they were all out to begin so I could just read them straight through.

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When I was an undergraduate, a good friend of me repeatedly recommended the Wheel of Time series. I said I would read them when the whole series was out. At this rate, I may never read them....

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I read the first 5
And then I found that I was dreading the next one. Every time I read the Wheel of Time, I fervently wished someone would kill every single female character in the books. So, I just stopped halfway through book 5, and never looked back.

I wish I could get the time I spent reading books 3 and 4 back too. Though I really enjoyed the first 2.

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My dad and I were reading those books together, but he got so furious with them after the wedding party massacre that he threw the book at the wall. Which... hurt the wall more than the book. And he's a pretty placid man. I've washed my hands of the series - to read the latest would require reading back, and I can't bring myself to go through that again. No matter how much I'd like to know what becomes of Jon. I suppose someone can just tell me? (She said hopefully).

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remind me after the last one comes out ... he left out lots of characters in book 4

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I'm pretty good at finishing fiction, I read fast so even if it's a bit dry I get past it. I hate being without a book so that has led me to finish some very questionable things.

Non-fiction is a another story. Usually I'm interested in finding specific information and once that has been accomplished I'm done. It has to VERY interesting for me to continue past that point.

i'd like to see 'irritating smugness' as a poll choice

A fine choice of supplemental options.

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I said that I always finish books, but that requires a bit of adjustment - I almost always finish books (eventually, not necessarily when I first begin reading them.) There are two notable exceptions to this. The first was Necronomicon - I'm sorry, Neal Stephenson, but this was an inexplicably horrible pile of prose. Editors are there to help you, not to harm you. The second was called something like Murder in the Kitchen - it was (I think) about someone stopping at a B&B and getting involved in a murder there. Or something. I don't know, I never finished it. In fact, it was so incredibly bad that I actually threw it away rather than take the milder step of give it back to the used bookstore - it was so bad I didn't want to be responsible for someone else wanting to read it.

Ooh. I loooooved Cryptonomicon. Which what I think you're referring to. The Necronomicon is this whole other stinking pile of fecal nonsense.

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Yes, I am referring to Cryptonomicon. This is why I shouldn't make LJ comments before breakfast.

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Seconding that finishing non-fiction isn't the point.

It occurs to me that I am least likely to finish non-fiction, not because it isn't well-written, but because finishing isn't the point.

Yes, I was about to say that when I noticed that you'd got there first. I usually finish non-fiction if it's intended to be read from start to finish (e.g. popular science books, biographies, and so on), but I rarely read the whole of a reference work (I've never finished the OED, for example...).

I don't see why opening a book is any sort of commitment at all. It's not like I'm going to hurt its feelings if I don't finish, and I highly doubt that anyone is checking up on me to make sure I read everything I own. And when I'm on my deathbed, I will not look back on my life and think "My greatest regret is not finishing that book that got stultifyingly boring on page 94".

I sometimes don't finish even really good books. It took me three tries to finish The Lord of the Rings, simply because I twice got distracted by something else that sucked up all my free time for a few months, and then had to start the whole thing again to make sure I hadn't forgotten too much of what had already happened. But I enjoyed it each time, even the bits I'd already read.

Unfinished fiction generally falls into three categories for me:

Books recommended by other people that turn out to be greatly not to my taste. Neal Stephenson comes to mind.

Things one ought to have read but can't actually stomach. Proust and Trollope top that list.

Books by people I sort of kind of know so feel obliged to attempt. I'm going to plead the fifth wrt examples.

Books by people I sort of kind of know so feel obliged to attempt. I'm going to plead the fifth wrt examples.

It is fear of this which has engendered my very bad habit of not reading books by people I know in the first place. Exceptions: if I started reading their books before I met them; if I'm editing a book.

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I've never even started Proust (though I've been thinking of doing so in honour of my trip to Paris). I can say proudly that I've read Ulysses all the way through. Twice. But

oursin reminded me that Life of Pi was another that I gave up on - that came under the category of "insufferable smugness of narrative voice" as reason for leaving. I have absolutely no compunction about abandoning things if they are boring or just plain awful or distasteful in some other way. Another that comes to mind is the Gap series by Stephen Donaldson. I managed to put up with Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, but I could not bear the cruelty and twisted sexuality in that other series, even though reliable people told me it got better.

A) Life is too short
B) I've read enough to be able to predict certain turns of plot, esp in genre fiction. Either have something to surprise me, or something that's not just Revelation I spotted several chapters back, or I won't keep reading.

Mostly I give up on fiction because it's boring me, but deciding that I hate the characters because of something they've done is another reason.

Things like overall tone or "insufferable smugness of narrative voice" (as suggested by

intertext can usually be detected by reading the first couple of pages, so with luck I never even start those.

Books that I don't finish are those of the category "not to be lightly tossed aside but flung violently across the room". I will struggle with bad writing if the story is good, but if the story is bad (which is not the same as either boring or predictable) I won't finish it and I won't take it to a charity shop.

Historical novels are particular offenders: putting present day attitudes into the past will produce a bruised wall every time.

Several times, I've been thwarted from finishing a book because I only owned part of it. Usually because they were inherited in not-entirely-complete condition, but once because it turned out to be misprinted - the last third had been replaced by a second copy of the first third.

I hate that problem! I still haven't read the last 20 pages of the first Circle of Magic book thanks to this problem. I've twice in my life bought books with duplicated text/missing sections, and thanks to that, I nearly always flip through books before buying now, checking that, at least superficially, all the pages look like they're there in order.

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I nth the "insufferable smugness" clause. At least two books that people I like and trust have praised to the skies -- War for the Oaks and Freedom and Necessity -- I nearly hurled aside because I felt that the author(s) were just so in love with how cool their characters were. The characters themselves had self-esteem issues, but the narrative voice was constantly in paroxysms of ecstasy about how damn great they were in every respect, and I just couldn't take it any more.

But serious moral disagreement can cause it too. I would've given Mercedes Lackey's By the Sword the staircase treatment for the discussion where one of the protagonists describes why it's perfectly justified, by her lights, to make a living as a mercenary. But it was a library book, so I just put it down and screamed.

As I am never going to meet the authors of the books I don't finish I don't see a commintment, it isn't as if they are going to be offended that I didn't like their books and never managed to see them through to the end. I read entirely for pleasure and I don't see that I am honour bound to complete something I don't enjoy when it is something I do purely for fun in the first place.

I don't often give up on a book half way through, I like to give it a good try to make sure that the book really, truly isn't for me. One of my biggest stumbling blocks tend to be series, particularly very long ones. I may have enjoyed something at the start but either I lose interest after reading too much of a very long series or often in a series that was not intended to run for so long the later books become lazier and therefore not as enjoyable. Also there are books in trilogies I don't enjoy but see to the end (to at least give them a chance) and as they continue onto another book I really can't face any more halfway through the second with the prospect of another to face after that.

For me it isn't always about how well written it is, the Ice & Fire books are well written and my husband loves them but I couldn't finish them for example, it's more an emotional response to the book. Like everything creative, fiction isn't always a right or wrong "this book is cleverly done so everyone will like it" thing, it can be very subjective and different books suit different people. Sometimes I will not know absolutely that a book is not the kind of book I like until I have read a fair chunk of it, but by then I know whole heartedly that I will never enjoy it and so it seems pointless to continue.

I've found the annoyance raised by ploughing through a really bad book right to the better end far less preferable to the pleasure of cursing and flinging said objectionable item across the room and finding something worthwhile.

I'm just easily distracted. Often times I'm reading 3 or four different things all at the same time and one of those items may get shunted off to the sidefor longer periods of time than others.

Sometimes the books I can't finish I'm just not interested in *now*, and I know that I'll come back to them later. Other times, they're "book poisoned"--someone's said something weird about them I can't forget, or someone I dislike vehemently endoreses them. And other times, they get put in my "reading" pile and never finished.

And, there are several titles that I stopped, came back to, and found myself completely mystified as to what was going on or why I was reading it in the first place. "Life of Pi" was like this. I put it down for a few weeks, and then I came back, and then I thought, who? what? Huh?

And there are some books that turned me off at page 1, so I don't count them as unfinished. ^-^;; ~~Like George R. R. Martin~~. *ducks the brickbats*

I think I should clarify-- I've finished 99.9 repeating percent of all books I've ever opened, save the two I mentioned (and I should say that there was a third that I can't remember the title of.)

The common thread among the books I've not finished is that they made me angry in some way, usually in character portrayal. Characters/protagonists who, in my own crabby opinion, are too stupid to be allowed will make me throw a book against the wall and never touch it again.

Mostly I have books that I bought and intended to read, but still have not. I'm still a bit burnt out with books and only enjoy reading fluff. I have some more academic books that I really want to read, but just can't seem to summon the energy. Mostly I finish what I start when it comes to novels, except for the one I mentioned in the polls for two reasons: It was huge, and second Geni had already given away most of the plot and said plot had kinda upset me.

October