“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” – Oscar Wilde.
I love the feeling of finishing a book. Finishing a book makes me feel happy and content and productive. However, sometimes this can prove difficult.
Every now and then I will be faced with a book I am not particularly enjoying, or am just struggling to get into. Everyone around me tells me to just give up and move on. Life’s too short to read a book you’re not enjoying they say. This leaves me torn. I want that feeling of finishing a book, and I always expect a book to get better as in a lot of cases it does. Furthermore, as someone who loves writing book reviews, I feel that I can’t write a proper book review if I am unable to finish a book. Sure, I can say that I didn’t finish it and tell you why I didn’t like it, but it doesn’t feel fair and sometimes I don’t know if it’s just me not putting enough effort in.
At the moment I am struggling to read a book. I am eighty pages into it and considering giving up because I am not enjoying it and I’m finding it confusing in places. However, I’ve seen rather positive reviews and I feel like I’m letting myself down because I always finish books and then I have to consider whether or not it is acceptable to write a review.
What are your thoughts regarding giving up books?
If you don’t like a book will you put it down and move on, or will you persevere?
-driftinglexi
driftinglexi 
I used to think that not finishing a book was absolute book sacrilege! As my TBR list has gotten bigger and bigger, I realized I just needed to put down books that I found miserable to continue.
Sometimes if I know the book has great reviews but I am not feeling it, I set it aside and start over from the beginning in a few weeks or months. Starting over usually does the trick for me!
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That’s what I tend to do with TV shows, the second time around I usually manage to get into it. I might have to do that!
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I can’t bear not to know! Even if I don’t like it I’ll still read to the end because I need the answers and I never feel happy saying I didn’t like a book unless I gave it the chance to turn to me around by the end lol xoxo
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While I’m not particularly interested enough to read to the end, I can relate to the last part. I feel like I can’t be fair if I haven’t finished it, so if I want to talk/discuss it I have to have finished it first.
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This is literally my life struggle, haha. I HATE abandoning books unfinished and almost never do it, but I do also hate the feeling of wasting time that could be spent reading books I might enjoy more.
Thankfully I’ve gotten fairly good at picking books I already have a strong feeling I’ll like in the first place so I don’t find myself in this situation too often. I totally understand the dilemma though! 😛
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It is such a tough decision to make. That’s good though, usually I’m quite good at finding books I’ll enjoy, or can at least finish, and since I hate not finishing a book, I think I might just put this one on hold for a while and try again another time.
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I really wish that I had the ability to force myself trough a book. But I can’t just do it. If a book bores me or I hate the writing style or I don’t know what other reason there is, I normally set it aside. Sometimes I fell guilty for not liking it and try to give it a second chance weeks/monthr or even years later. Sometimes this works, sometimes not. And sometimes there are just books I can’t finish. I hate this, but I hat it even more to force myself trough. I want to enjoy reading and not feel like I have to read this book, just of the sake to finish it.
But I really admire all people who can do this, I hate the feeling of buying a book and not liking it and then not finishing it because of that… I hope this comment made sense xD
xo
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Me too, haha! It can be really tough. I’m the same, I really want to enjoy all books, but that isn’t always possible. Yes, fortunately I didn’t have to pay for this book, but nevertheless it’s frustrating to have a book in front of you which you are having difficulty reading. For the time being I’m going to read some other books and come back to it in a few weeks.
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