Quote:
Originally Posted by calvin-c
I wonder if you have the same problem I do, that of finding it hard to quit anything I start. I've read far too many books where I've reached the end wondering why I bothered to finish it.
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Yes, I think it's a part of it, at least subconsciously.
I
have in the last couple of years dropped a few books without finishing them, but my problem is that I remember, vividly, several books from when I was young that took forever to get going - books I even put aside for some time and restarted later, more than once - that turned out to be very much worth the effort in the end.
So unless the book is completely unreadable / awful / it's extremely clear it's not my cup of tea
at all, I will persevere - and often enough, end up with a "meh" book (and sometimes, one I definitely didn't regret reading).
So, yes, that sense of "wasted time" is certainly stronger with a 800 page book than a 400 page book. And it probably doesn't help that
most doorstoppers seem to belong to genres I don't generally care for all that much (epic fantasy, historical/literary fiction), which rather adds to the reluctance. On the other hand, there are some fantasy, historical and literary works I've enjoyed a great deal, without expecting to, so I don't necessarily want to reject anything just due to the "wrong" genre and size.
One thing I've got a lot better about with the arrival of ebooks is that I feel no compunction at all to finish a series I've started. If the first book is meh (and I haven't bought the next books yet), I have no qualms about dropping the series. It's trickier if I've bought several books (if the blurbs sound potentially right my kind of thing, and there's been a good sale), because that sense of "shouldn't let the money go to waste" is another issue I still need to work on.