What Happens When I Don't Like a Book

I used to think that if I started a book, I had to finish it, and that was what I did when I read books. I always finished them. There were only two real exceptions to this rule.

The first was Beloved by Toni Morrison. It wasn't a particular dislike for the novel, but rather, I could not get past a particular vulgar description in the book, so I put it down right away. I've heard many good things about the book, and I can't say it was boring. I can say that I was only seventeen and too immature to read the story and appreciate it for what it was. I still don't know, even at thirty-five, if I can read that novel. So I probably won't.

The second was Jane Eyre, and obviously I was wrong. Once I was able to get through the first one hundred pages, I found a beautiful story.

So what do I do when I don't like a book? If the content is questionable in the context of the story, I usually put it down. What do I mean by "in the context of the story"? I mean that the questionable content is gratuitous and hardly serves the advancement of the story. There have been times, a la The Time Traveler's Wife, when I have finished the book anyway. That book is beautifully written, but if I were a time traveler and could go back in time, I would put it down. Because the content was gratuitous even if the story was excellent...and excellently told. I put down American Gods recently. I loved the idea of the premise behind the story...an uniquely American mythology. Fantastic idea! But when, in the first ten pages, I've skipped about half of them so as not to be offended by the sex, that means it isn't worth the read to me.

If I'm bored, I give it fifty to one hundred pages, depending on length. If it goes on and I cannot get into it, I say forget it. I used to think that was "bad" because maybe I'd be missing out. But I've learned that it's the author's job to captivate me and bring me into the story. If that doesn't happen within the first one hundred pages, it probably isn't going to happen, and I'm going to be disappointed in the end. It is not, however, my job to fall in love with a story that isn't well told, and I'm not obligated to finish stories that fall flat. So I don't finish them.

Now I know that just because I can't finish a book for whatever reason, that doesn't mean it's awful. It just wasn't great for me. It's the rare book that I think deserves to be burnt. Usually that is because it's poorly written and not worth the paper it's printed on and generally, I cannot believe that a publishing company thought it was worth their resources to print it.

I say all this because I've been looking at my ratings and bookshelves on goodreads. And I think that sometimes I'm harsh on writers when I want to be one myself, and I imagine how I'll react to future criticisms of my writing. I'm pretty certain that there will be those who don't like what I write and perhaps even hate it. I see authors who write reviews, and I wonder if they are going easy on the writer. I just want to be honest about what I think because my friends read my reviews.

And now I'm rambling. So the end.