To Finish or Not to Finish?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

An author who can't impress you with his/her story, characters or style in a first chapter doesn't deserve your attention for a second chapter. Reading time's too precious to waste. It's the author's job to interest you, not your chore to complete what an author wants to put your way. I'd rather throw away or delete a book after a few disappointing pages than see it as some kind of marathon challenge that takes up valuable time that could be better spent on a more deserving work. Good authors with worthwhile offerings will grab you within five hundred words and hold you spellbound right the way to an unwelcome *The End*. Neil

I highly disagree. If I had stopped after the first chapter just because the first chapter was not whiz bang wow, I would have missed out on a lot or really good books.

[neilmarr]

OK, Jon. I respect your take, but I really do believe few books that don't immediately attract are worth the struggle. You've been lucky (and patient) enough to find those that kick in later. Good on ya. Cheers. Neil

[MelC]

I voted:

"I rarely do not complete a book I finish. (It's happened just a few times in my entire history)"

Because...well isn't this true for everyone? In fact now that I think about it, all those who voted for it, including me are liars because I expect we NEVER do not complete books we finish. Seriously was I the only one who noticed this?

On a less nitpicky note, the spirit of this selection holds true for me - I have a hard time giving up on a book and it almost never happens. The only one in recent memory is House of Leaves which I have tried a few times and, while interesting, is far too complicated and I start losing stamina after about 100 pages. This has, however, resulted in my punishing myself by reading books that I found truly horrible. Still, it has also meant that some of the books which I struggled to get into e.g. Special Topics in Calamity Physics have become my favourites.

Mel

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by ShortNCuddlyAm

I can't remember!

It had anthromorphic animals in, but that wasn't the reason... (I know it wasn't any of the Magic Kingdom For Sale/Sold books, and that I read it around the same time. Which helps not a bit!)

sounds like you've blocked it from your memory.

Probably a self-protection mechanism.

[=X=]

Originally Posted by Andanzas

I never stop reading a book, I just leave it for later.

Me too, I've set some books aside that taken me years to pick up and re-read.

=X=

[ruth1304]

I used to think that I should finish everything I started but I'm a bit more relaxed now and think that there are too many books I really want to read and will enjoy to spend time on something I'm not enjoying.

Sometimes I do go back to things after a long break and find them much easier to read on a second/third attempt!

[Bilbo1967]

I have found that I actually complete less books since I bought my Sony 505!

The reasons for this are:

1. I have about 200 unread books on my Reader. It's like sitting next to a big bookcase when reading with lots of other books crying out for attention! If I'm travelling it's just too easy to skip between books if I even get a little bit bored. In the past, I'd probably only have had one or two books with me.

2. Since getting my Reader, I get a lot of books free (PD books and Creative Commons). In the days when I had to shell out some hard-earned cash I was more likely to read a book to the bitter end just out of principle. It's also true that I find that I just don't like some of the classics or creative commons freely available out there when I start them.

[Ea]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

1. I have about 200 unread books on my Reader. It's like sitting next to a big bookcase when reading with lots of other books crying out for attention! If I'm travelling it's just too easy to skip between books if I even get a little bit bored. In the past, I'd probably only have had one or two books with me.

Me, too. I've started to try not to have more than 2-3 books going at a time, and if I feel I've given a book enough tries and still can't get into it, it ends up in either to-read-later or I-won't-try-ever-again.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

An author who can't impress you with his/her story, characters or style in a first chapter doesn't deserve your attention for a second chapter. Reading time's too precious to waste. It's the author's job to interest you, not your chore to complete what an author wants to put your way. I'd rather throw away or delete a book after a few disappointing pages than see it as some kind of marathon challenge that takes up valuable time that could be better spent on a more deserving work. Good authors with worthwhile offerings will grab you within five hundred words and hold you spellbound right the way to an unwelcome *The End*. Neil

Well put. I find far more 'in-between' authors than I like, but sometimes I think that depends on what alternatives I have. If I have an unread book from an author I know & like then I'm more ready to drop a book whose author doesn't positively grab me within the first chapter or so. If my alternatives are other unknown books and the author doesn't bore me to tears in the first chapter then I'm probably more willing to give him/her a little longer. But I don't think I've read any book past maybe the 5th chapter unless it either absolutely got me hooked or I was on a trip where I had no other reading material. (That rarely happens any more. With eBooks I've usually got at least a few books I consider worth re-reading, just in case.)

[hike_gc]

I used to always push through every book I started. Then I realized life is too short to waste on books I really dislike. But I have to REALLY dislike a book to not finish it. I think there was actually a book I once threw away and did not even donate it to the local library book sale because I disliked it so much.

I usually tell myself that I broadened my horizons by finishing the book but would never choose to read anything else by that author.

[neilmarr]

Funny how recreational reading of fiction and work reading of fiction is so different. Whereas I won't struggle with a book I'm supposedly reading for fun, I'm presented with an average of about thirty novel submissions from authors and literary agencies to my own wee publishing house every month and go to a tad more trouble. Sometimes, the synopsis looks good but the first two sample chapters I ask for as a taster don't kick off with justifying promise. Occasionally, a book built around a strong synopsis can be transformed with attention to its opening and with the (sometimes impatient) reader in mind ... for instance, by reducing chapter one to a prologue-size and kicking off with chapter two; rewriting the first couple of chapters, etc. Then it's just a matter of co-operation between editor and author to make the adjustment necessary to maintain a pace throughout (very often the editorial process will take a year or more). Of course, I and the two other fiction editors on my team only go to all this trouble with a book that was essentially sound. The others, I'm afraid, are declined. Anyway, all that is perhaps why I have little patience with a commercially produced book that fails to grab me within a few pages. Cheers. Neil

[kennyc]

Exactly Neil. Being a writer over the years I've struggled exactly with separating the work from the pleasure and in fact got it so thoroughly mixed up in the past that it pretty much ruined my ability to enjoy reading for fun, but with my re-entry via the ereader route I'm regaining that enjoyment and I'm here to report that it is working and also that I do hope to get back to the writing (work) as well.

The main difference in the two scenarios you indicate is that in one case -- the pleasure reading of the published book is that it should have already gone through the editorial process and should not contain the warts and errors and omissions that could very possibly be in a first submission to an agent or publisher.

I think someone above mentioned Hemingway - "The first draft of anything is shit." and ofttimes the first submission still has the smell. but a published/finished work should not.

[neilmarr]

What I've tended to do this year, Kenny, is to read for fun only on my 505. So there's a distinct line between that and 'work reads' on the big screen or in hard copy. I know now when I'm supposed to be enjoying myself. And it's somehow less painful to delete a book from the reader than it is to throw away a treebook.

Something I have found with the reader (perhaps you have, too, as a writer) is that I'm so used to the eccentric layout of most raw manuscripts that the hiccups with formatting that get on the nerves of others here don't bother me a jot. Non-justification, the missing paragraph break, the occasional word mangle or line widow sail right by me on the reader -- I can just settle down to a job prepared by someone else. Chefs maybe feel the same way when they eat out.

Hoots. Neil

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

An author who can't impress you with his/her story, characters or style in a first chapter doesn't deserve your attention for a second chapter. Reading time's too precious to waste. It's the author's job to interest you, not your chore to complete what an author wants to put your way. I'd rather throw away or delete a book after a few disappointing pages than see it as some kind of marathon challenge that takes up valuable time that could be better spent on a more deserving work. Good authors with worthwhile offerings will grab you within five hundred words and hold you spellbound right the way to an unwelcome *The End*. Neil

Many years ago, I was given a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the rings" trilogy by an English teacher. I started reading _The Fellowship of the Rings_. I began with "When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton."

It stopped me dead for a minute. I'd been reading SF for years, but this was something else. I had to push myself through aboyut the first 100 pages before the work kicked in. After that, I read the trilogy in a weekend, and have re-read it an average of one a year since.

Years later, I encountered E. R. Eddison's _The Worm Ouroboros_, in a Ballantine PB edition. Introduced to fantasy by Tolkien, I'd been reading broadly in the genre, looking for things that weren't simply quest tales. I encountered "THERE was a man named Lessingham dwelt in an old low house in Wasdale, set in a gray old garden where yew-trees flourished that had seen Vikings in Copeland in their seedling time."

This was quite another matter. Eddison was a Victorian gentleman that wrote Elizabethan prose. I bounced off, till I learned to relax and let the book read itself to me, rather than actively read it myself. Once the taste was acquired, the prose went down like fine cognac, and I understood why Ursula K. Le Guin should single out Eddison's work in her volume of essays The language of the night: essays on fantasy and science fiction

If I'd followed your dictum, I'd have passed on both of these, for not grabbing me from the first few pages.

I could probably come up with other examples, and I'm sure others here could as well. While I concur that it's an author's job to interest me, it's my job to keep an open mind, free as I can of preconceptions about what I might find of interest, and stay aware that unfamiliar style, structure, or subject does not equate to bad book.

It may in fact be a bad book, for reasons I can technically analyze. It may be a decent book that just doesn't do it for me. It may be a book I'm not in the mood for then, but may pick up at another time and read with pleasure. Regardless, a chapter is likely not sufficient evidence one way or the other.
______
Dennis

[Ea]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Years later, I encountered E. R. Eddison's _The Worm Ouroboros_, in a Ballantine PB edition. Introduced to fantasy by Tolkien, I'd been reading broadly in the genre, looking for things that weren't simply quest tales. I encountered "THERE was a man named Lessingham dwelt in an old low house in Wasdale, set in a gray old garden where yew-trees flourished that had seen Vikings in Copeland in their seedling time."

This was quite another matter. Eddison was a Victorian gentleman that wrote Elizabethan prose. I bounced off, till I learned to relax and let the book read itself to me, rather than actively read it myself. Once the taste was acquired, the prose went down like fine cognac, and I understood why Ursula K. Le Guin should single out Eddison's work in her volume of essays The language of the night: essays on fantasy and science fiction

If I'd followed your dictum, I'd have passed on both of these, for not grabbing me from the first few pages.

I could probably come up with other examples, and I'm sure others here could as well. While I concur that it's an author's job to interest me, it's my job to keep an open mind, free as I can of preconceptions about what I might find of interest, and stay aware that unfamiliar style, structure, or subject does not equate to bad book.

It may in fact be a bad book, for reasons I can technically analyze. It may be a decent book that just doesn't do it for me. It may be a book I'm not in the mood for then, but may pick up at another time and read with pleasure. Regardless, a chapter is likely not sufficient evidence one way or the other.
______
Dennis

You just inspired me to try The Worm Ouroboros.

I agree with you. Some books don't give away their riches without a little effort on the reader's part, espcially if it's a type of prose that one is not used to.