On the verge of abandoning a book... for the first time in my life

[Loosheesh]

Originally Posted by issybird

Is there a test on Monday?

I love this, a nice succinct way of snapping out of the maybe it'll get better stupor. More than once I've been in the middle of a book and found myself blurting out "why am I even reading this??" At that stage, I know it's time to let go.

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

Life is too short for bad books.

Amen to that.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by John F

Aren't there 14 or 15 books in the series? Are you missing a zero?

There are 15 books (including the prequel) and 12.500 is what I see in the page-count of my omnibus version. (Before I split it up into separate books.)

Originally Posted by Sirtel

14, and the page count plugin in Calibre is telling me there are 17,000 pages in my omnibus version.

Edit: 15, if you count the prequel New Spring.

Indeed; but my page count is not the default. It's based on an average of 10 hardcover fantasy books and 10 paperbacks. The default count is based on paperback pages. Because of the hardcovers that are mixed in with mine, my "pages" are therefore a bit longer.

[John F]

I guess I was thinking paperback, and even then, my memory failed me; they are shorter then I remember.

[maddz]

Well, I finished that review copy. I won't say I found it bad, just not very good. Let's say that I found it very slow and oddly passive; it needed to be moved out of first person PoV and the story line tightened up drastically.

The story can be summarised as girl jumps into sea in place of the chosen sacrifice, goes to spirit realm, and not much happens (apart from various attacks) while she figures out how to break the curse on the god and save her people. Meh. A lot more could have been done to improve the story, but I suppose it's the norm for YA.

[gmw]

I used to see all books through to the end, but with some my eyes would glaze over so much that I didn't really retain anything anyway, so it really was time completely wasted. In recent years I have been slowly improving and putting aside books that just aren't working for me.

[DNSB]

So far I've only marked 1 book as DNF. But now that I've done it once, it will probably happen more often in the future.

My experience was much like @Katsunami's with the Edward Bulwer-Lytton book in the OP. In the middle of the first chapter, the story was suspended while the author wandered off into an overly long (and, IMHO, unneeded) mass of prose for setting/world building. Back to the story for a few pages and then yet more repetitive world building. Which is where I DNFed the book. Where's an editor when you need one?

[arjaybe]

You could try skimming the dense parts. That's what I do if there's too much wallpaper. I have discarded a few books in recent years. I don't have the patience I used to.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by DNSB

So far I've only marked 1 book as DNF. But now that I've done it once, it will probably happen more often in the future.

My experience was much like @Katsunami's with the Edward Bulwer-Lytton book in the OP. In the middle of the first chapter, the story was suspended while the author wandered off into an overly long (and, IMHO, unneeded) mass of prose for setting/world building. Back to the story for a few pages and then yet more repetitive world building. Which is where I DNFed the book. Where's an editor when you need one?

So this is actually the only book you marked as DNF? LOL.

Originally Posted by arjaybe

You could try skimming the dense parts. That's what I do if there's too much wallpaper. I have discarded a few books in recent years. I don't have the patience I used to.

Nah. I either read it, or not. I'm not going to skim over half a book and then say that I've "read" it.

As Deskisames said: life's too short for bad books. I have almost 1100 books in calibre, including 60 Delphi Classics. So, I have lots to read, most stuff in the fantasy genre. I'll pick a classic now and then as I used to, but if I don't like it I'll just stop reading it.

It's not the patience that's the problem; it's the time. If I start to get the "Get on with the STORY already!"-feeling, then I get the urge to do something more productive. World building, background, an info-dump now and then are all OK. Sentences with info-dumps that take up a third of my screen and are so complicated that I mentally have to rebuild them into separate sentences so I can actually understand them, are not OK. It's certainly bad if half the book is written like that.

Seems to be an affliction that got around quite a lot in the days of the Victorian writers. Maybe they where trying to one-up one another in this regard. (It actually wouldn't surprise me.)

If a book is not great, but it's easy to read an not too long (for example: one of the lesser Forgotten Realms fantasy novels), I could still see it through because it can be read quickly. Therefore I have a feeling that most of my DNF's will end up to be 'classics one should have read...'

[hobnail]

It's what I'd call a sunk cost. You feel like you've spent the money on the book, or already invested a significant amount of time, and don't want to throw that away. Rather, think of it as you've already wasted that time or money, so why waste more time?

In economics and business decision-making, a sunk cost (also known as retrospective cost) is a cost that has already been incurred and cannot be recovered.

[Apache]

I used to read all the way through most books especially the hard cover ones. They were expensive. Now I put more down. The way I look at it now is that I would hate to miss reading a really good book because I was slogging through a bad one.
Apache

[theducks]

Not frequently, but it happens a few times a year. (I set the date read to 2000 in Calibre. long before I started using it for real.)
Same happened with dead tree Library books. Got sucked in by the blurb or reading a few pages, only to discover that things did not hold up.

Hawaii took me YEARS to reach the end. It was not bad, just long winded.

Another fail is lack of story believably (Characters or scene so stupidly plotted).

Mil SF with nothing but end-to-end battle scenes.

I want to be entertained. A few groaners are good. 23 per page

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

So this is actually the only book you marked as DNF? LOL.

Yes. With my reading speed, it doesn't take that long to read through a book so I was rather surprised when I ran into the first book that I could not finish. If this book had been Paul Clifford, by the end of the first paragraph, I would have been on a first name basis with every raindrop that had fallen and would fall in London that week.

[ZodWallop]

I rarely abandon books. But not due to any determination to finish every book I start. I just do research before trying something and perhaps have low standards.

I've looked into Bulwer-Lytton, but if I were to try one of his books, it would likely be Paul Clifford rather than The Coming Race. I could just tell that one wouldn't be a book for me.

It reminds me a bit if The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. That one also starts well, but then becomes a long, dull slog.

*Incidentally, I never understood why "It was a dark and stormy night..." was considered such a bad start to a story. Yes, the full Bulwer-Lytton sentence is too long. But I find nothing wrong with the sorter, oft-quoted sentence.

The full sentence is:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

[DNSB]

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Perhaps an indication that most people might prefer "It was a dark and stormy night." without logorrhea exhibited by the rest of the sentence. I admit that was a popular style in the 1800's but for me, it's cold pancakes and no honey.

[LordP]

Life is too short to waste what little time we have. Dump the book.

I find myself gravitating towards more dialogue-oriented books lately, something like James Patterson would write. His books are very quick reads because the dialogue is quick and to the point - you might want to try him for a bit, as a palate cleanser.