Quote:
Originally Posted by comtrjl
Does anyone else ever get a feeling of guilt at starting a book and then, after struggling for a bit, simply give it up? Or, having started, do you stick it to the bitter end without ever really getting into it? I recently began a novel by a highly respected English novelist - supposedly one of his masterpieces - but almost from the beginning just couldn't relate to it and eventually abandoned it. Fortunately he has long since passed away, so he'll never know ..
|
I have stopped books in the middle. I normally don't slog grimly through it unless it's a series that is dragging in parts.
But I don't toss a book I've dropped. It's been my experience that you must be in the right frame of mind to appreciate a book. If you aren't you may get nowhere. Sometimes, letting a book lie fallow will let me approach it with a different viewpoint and appreciate it the second time. Sometimes reading commentary about the book will give me a handle by which I can grasp it: "Oh!
That's what the author is trying to do..."
And sometimes I have to learn to relax and let the book read itself to me, rather than actively trying to read it myself. A good example is E. R. Eddison's _The Worm Ouroboros_. Eddison was a Victorian gentleman who wrote Elizabethan prose. Once I learned to relax and let the book read itself to me on it's own terms, it went down like fine cognac, and it became a treasured favorite.
______
Dennis