Ive never really finished a book if I dont like it after about 100 pages. What do you guys do?
Thinking mainly fiction
If its non fiction I may just read some other chapters but not all the way through
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I think there’s maybe only two books ever that I have not finished. I pretty much read them through, if they gets to a point where I don’t really like it, I will speed read, because maybe things get better later.
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Very rare that I wouldn’t finish a book. I can only think of two or three ever that I just put down and never went back to.
I usually tough it out. But have quit 2 or 3 books.
Very rarely but does happen. First case is the book is horrifically bad. Second is it’s a long and hard read (ie. Requires a fair amount of thought) and so I don’t get through it - usually a book I’ve always wanted to read and so start on vacation or when work isn’t too demanding but then bail when I’m back home or too burnt from work. Examples are Infinite Jest by David Wallace or Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. But damn it, I’ll finish them one day soon!
D’Kid gave me a copy of that
It intimidates me, I must confess … and I’ve read Moby Dick (unabridged) at least three times
https://semi-rad.com/2024/04/moby-dick-is-my-literary-ultramarathon/
… and if not, there’s always the joyful promise of a zero-
review
It’s an enjoyable book and not a hard read….but it’s really fucking long. Great desert island or solitary prison confinement book where you can really get into it. Reading 10-20 pages before falling asleep each night does not work.
Pretty much a read them through sort of person, but as I’ve aged I have become more likely to quit a book.
Some times I give up. I can think of The Brothers Karamazov (sic?). I got half way through and couldn’t do it anymore.
I read the entire thing but I must say ten plus pages of a description of flensing a whale was over the top.
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The story’s pretty lame
Dude needs a job. Dude gets a job. His boss is nuts. Dude makes the best of it. Job takes a bad turn.
But it’s the craftsmanship that I go back to, time & time again
http://www.online-literature.com/melville/mobydick/
Pick a chapter at random, and dig in
Without saying a word, Queequeg, in his wild sort of way, jumped upon the bulwarks, from thence into the bows of one of the whale-boats hanging to the side; and then bracing his left knee, and poising his harpoon, cried out in some such way as this:-
“Cap’ain, you see him small drop tar on water dere? You see him? well, spose him one whale eye, well, den!” and taking sharp aim at it, he darted the iron right over old Bildad’s broad brim, clean across the ship’s decks, and struck the glistening tar spot out of sight.
“Now,” said Queequeg, quietly, hauling in the line, “spos-ee him whale-e eye; why, dad whale dead.”
“Quick, Bildad,” said Peleg, his partner, who, aghast at the close vicinity of the flying harpoon, had retreated towards the cabin gangway. “Quick, I say, you Bildad, and get the ship’s papers. We must have Hedgehog there, I mean Quohog, in one of our boats. Look ye, Quohog, we’ll give ye the ninetieth lay, and that’s more than ever was given a harpooneer yet out of Nantucket.”
So down we went into the cabin, and to my great joy Queequeg was soon enrolled among the same ship’s company to which I myself belonged.
I have stopped many books. If you don’t hook me somehow in the first 5 chapters, I am done.
I once asked a good friend of mine for a book recommendation. He told me about some book (I don’t remember what it was) that was his favourite book.
I read about 80 pages and asked him: “This picks up right? I am about 80 pages in and nothing is happening”.
“No, not really. That’s kind of how the whole book goes.”
“Yeah, I am going to give that one back. Thanks.”
I selected the vid with subtitles as it is the most complete example
“A true masterpiece cannot be crucified on a Cross of this design”
It’s a mood for sure. I’ve only rad about 100 ages of that and then moved onto something else but he has a lot of fun writing it and the style is very good example of that long winded light hearted etc
You and I seem not to be the common ones! Most keep going.
Very, very rarely that I don’t finish. One was from Noam Chomsky about former Yugoslavia where he rants more about his issues with the US government then about Yugoslavia. The other one was about theoretical physics where the math started to be too advanced for me and there was too much of it.
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i’ll put them down (or literally throw them) too
life’s too short to read so so books, or watch bad comedy, or eat mediocre food, because there is so much abundance of good. the trick is cutting through the marketing BS, which can be and is gamed like crazy.
Certain awards help, but you have to know which ones to trust (I’ve been consistently let down by Pulitzer fiction winners for example). Or you go with an author you know will hit the spot.
weirdly, you can often judge a book by its cover, as long as you’re not in the airport where they’re trying to sell you on genres, so all the thriller/romance/mystery covers look alike
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I reckon the covers of books published these days look great and give a literary quality but they are actually not very good. The focus groups are working and the titles sound great. I want to read something modern about all the modern things that are happening that have the same quality as a real classic author from early 20tn century. How do I find them.
This thread should be, are any living authors as good as the dead authors of the past.
try Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
