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| Posted By : xiaotien - 10/12/2007 11:02 AM | i posted recently about a book i found
in the uk bookstore titled the court 0f the a1r
by a hunt. (yeah, i'm trying to disguise in case
the poor author googles this or something.)
i gave the novel three chapters and then
i gave up on it. i just couldn't read any further.
the story didn't interest me and neither did
the characters.
when do you usually give up on a novel?
and what books have you given up on reading?
for me : atlas shrugged by rand
as well as the above mentioned.
cindy p.a little sweet, a little sour.
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| Posted By : Jeff Stehman - 10/12/2007 11:10 AM | _Dune Messiah_. About a hundred pages into it I realized I didn't care about anything or anyone to that point and figured that was enough. I think that was my first unfinished novel, which made it a rather significant moment in my reading career. There have been a few others since then, but none are leaping to mind at the moment.
--Jeff Stehman |
| Posted By : H.P. Lovesauce - 10/12/2007 12:39 PM | That's your lesson not to pick up just any old book in a place where they don't speak American. 
It's almost as if the British have reacted against American-style Clarion-influenced workmanlike story construction by writing long, rambly, arty novels. And the editors have contributed by not checking the wild growth of verbal topiary.
There was a Niven & Pournelle novel that tripped my Fascism Threshhold meter some 30 pages in. That book got sold. |
| Posted By : Jeff Stehman - 10/12/2007 1:17 PM | Come, come, HP, we're all friends here. Name names (or titles in this case).
--Jeff Stehman |
| Posted By : Bill Ward - 10/12/2007 1:31 PM | I don't have any hard and fast rules for stopping, more of a 'I know it when I see it.' As I read more, I also put aside unfinished books more often, which is a necessary ruthlessness if I'm to do anything more with my time other than read. Most recently Uncle Tom's Cabin, Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise, Davidson's Masters of the Maze, Jennifer Government, a couple of books from Abaddon, and Heinlein's The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag got the old heave-ho for various reasons, most of which boil down to 'I don't need or want to read this now, maybe not ever.' Sometimes it's a case of seeing it all before, sometimes a case of the author losing my respect for some opinionated nonsense or for plain old bad writing, and sometimes it's just me.
One sure sign that I've lost interest is I start skimming; if I get to the point where I don't feel I'll glean anything by continuing to skim the book (or go back to read it more closely) I put it aside. I'd like to think my days of reading things for completeness sake (for a series, or favorite author) or just to put another entry in my reading log are over. |
| Posted By : H.P. Lovesauce - 10/12/2007 3:28 PM |
Jeff Stehman said...Come, come, HP, we're all friends here. Name names (or titles in this case).
Google tells me the right-wing screed was Oath of Fealty. I also declined a (re)read of Starship Troopers for a different course.
Some woman in a British gaming magazine praise Mary Gentle. They showed a photo of her wearing a hat, long a symbol of insouciant female hotness. I was powerless.
Orcs is a pretty straightforward story. Not the way Gentle tells it, though. But I was helpless (the hat!), and read Gentle's Rats & Gargoyles. Some 400-plus pages, 150 of those devoted to a single hour of activity. An important hour, sure, but that was too much. No more. Too much write, not enough edit, to heck with the fedora, and the curly, auburn hair, and the pale, freckled skin... 
That's when I started reading gaming fiction. |
| Posted By : darkbow - 10/12/2007 4:43 PM | "when do you usually give up on a novel?"
Usually not soon enough, if it's that bad.
There have been very few novels I've started and not finished, but most times I know within the first hundred pages.
I'm more disappointed in the number of novels I did NOT stop reading. But one reason I force my way through the novels that cause me pain is because there have been a handful of books that I've hated all the way through, but have loved them in the end, usually because there's some big insight or something that makes it all worth while. Most of Hemingway's work strikes me this way, me hating it until the very last page, then all of a sudden I love it.
www.tyjohnston.blogspot.com
"Hot Off the Press" now available in Ray Gun Revival #25. |
| Posted By : Jeff Stehman - 10/12/2007 5:45 PM | darkbow said...
I'm more disappointed in the number of novels I did NOT stop reading.
A coworker handed me a "great" novel. After reading the back, I asked, "Is this one of those novels where we find out at the end that these aliens are actually human colonists who have forgotten their past?" "No." He lied. I started suspecting it before the end, but moron that I am, I soldiered on.
--Jeff Stehman |
| Posted By : Hermit - 10/12/2007 11:24 PM | | Depends. If I'm reading it for review, I usually give it enough rope to hang itself from a redwood. If I paid for it, it better pull me in and turn me on. Five pages of dull and I'm gone. If I really Want to like it - usually because of name recognition - I'll give it five minutes in random samples to rebuild my curiosity. A couple things will drive me away quickly: stupid, generic, goofy, or cliche names of persons or places. Bad dialogue, which is to say poorly crafted dialogue (one book I'm reading for a revue right now has the godawefullest stupidass dunderheaded speech impedimism for a civilation supposedly a world away. I'm trying to keep an open mind, but this is probably a deal stopper. Guy probably had fun writing it, but whoever decided to publish it should set me up with his source for narcotropics. . . . Back on topic: My money, I'm impatient and have a shrot attention span; free book for review, I'm dogged and a workhorse about it. In cases like the one above, I'll likely not write the review (I'm 88 pages in now: I was 18 pages in before I knew I hated it).
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| Posted By : J Erwine - 10/14/2007 7:08 PM | I'm one of those people that has to finish whatever he starts. There are very few books that I've ever dropped in the middle...and those were about 100 pages after I should have stopped. The one that stands out most for me was Blue Mars. I tried, I really did, and it was too bad because I really liked Red Mars.
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| Posted By : Edward Knight - 10/15/2007 10:44 AM | There is too much good stuff out there to waste time reading something you don't like. There are two books on my mantle right now that I put down months ago with the book marks still in place. One is these because it bored me to tears (that one being one of the Wheel of Time Books). The other offended my moral sensitivity to the point that I stopped reading. That one being Shadowmarch by Tad Williams. I tried to struggle through it, but all that business of castrated men trying to act and dress like women finally got to me.
Edward Knight
Editor
Journey Books Publishing
http://www.journeybookspublishing.com
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| Posted By : anna - 10/15/2007 11:51 AM | I rarely give up, but instead keep plugging away hoping it will get better. Often it doesn't.
One does come to mind, though I have long forgotten the title. It was on the horror shelf and the cover art was promising. The characters were all those childhood icons such as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and so forth.
I stopped when it became obvious that the book was much too pornographic for my taste. Santa's emissions hardening into candy canes for the little girls to suck, and the Tooth Fairy dispensing nickels from her arse like a fecal fetishist's darkest fantasy just went too far out there for me.
And that was barely 60 pages into a rather thick paperback. I shudder to guess where it went from there....... |
| Posted By : Anthony G Williams - 10/15/2007 9:22 PM |
Bill Ward said...
I don't have any hard and fast rules for stopping, more of a 'I know it when I see it.' As I read more, I also put aside unfinished books more often, which is a necessary ruthlessness if I'm to do anything more with my time other than read. Me too. I used to read everything, but times have changed and life's too short.
With new books, I fail to finish maybe a quarter to a third of them. However, I'm currently going through a phase of re-reading old books which have sat on my shelves for decades; I've mostly forgotten the plots, so I can enjoy them all over again. And I do: the old masters may lack something in characterisation compared with the current fashion, but they compensate with great plots and fast-paced action, which I generally prefer. Also, they are usually so much shorter that it takes little time to read them.
The longer a book is, the more likely I am to bin it if it doesn't grab me fairly quickly.
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| Posted By : xiaotien - 10/16/2007 7:29 PM | i think i'm going to have to ditch k1m harr1son's
dead w1tch walk1ing. i'm at p 108 and find that
i simply don't care very much.
cindy p.
a little sweet, a little sour.
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| Posted By : bleacheddecay - 10/16/2007 10:10 PM | I really enjoyed that book but each to their own.
I also enjoyed Jennifer Government that someone else wrote they didn't finish.
bleacheddecay |
| Posted By : Dave Panchyk - 10/17/2007 9:17 AM |
xiaotien said...i think i'm going to have to ditch k1m harr1son's dead w1tch walk1ing. i'm at p 108 and find that i simply don't care very much.
Thank you. The "world" gets cooler throughout the novel, and some of the action is interesting, but I've never met a narrator I've hated so much as the witch Rachel.
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| Posted By : Jordan Lapp - 10/17/2007 10:13 AM |
Jeff Edwards said...
What makes it worse is that I have just discovered some controversy about this book. It is part of a series by an author who always relied on a ghost-writer. He and the ghost-writer parted ways before this book was written. I will never touch another book "written" by this "New York Times bestselling author" again. This was my first and last time picking up one of "his" books.
This is baffling. If the ghost writer is writing NYT bestsellers, why is he a GHOST writer. Why not write the books himself?
How did you find this info out?
Jordan Lapp Managing Editor
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| Posted By : Jordan Lapp - 10/19/2007 5:37 PM | How did he get a book contract if the writing was bad? Must have a famous name?
Jordan Lapp
Managing Editor
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| Posted By : Jordan Lapp - 10/19/2007 5:44 PM | Do you have a link maybe? That way you wouldn't have to do the name thing...
Jordan Lapp
Managing Editor
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| Posted By : S Michael - 10/19/2007 5:53 PM | | I don't have much patience with stand alone books and/or authors that I haven't read before. I read for entertainment and my basic criteria is if it isn't entertaining me, I quit ... see absolutely no reason to continue to waste my time on something that is not of interest. That's why I don't watch TV ...
With series books and/or authors I've read before and liked, I will push a little more. Some authors turn out to be very "uneven" for me and there will be some books I like well enough to keep on my personal bookshelves and re-read often and other books by the same author will end up going back to the library unfinished.
The same happens with series. All too often I will be enthusiastic over the first book in a series, only to see it going downhill in the 2nd or 3rd book. I find I will tolerate one not-so-great book in a series, but if it seems a steady decline, I will end up giving up.
I have several books on my bookshelves that are the first book in a series ... and I re-read them with considerable enjoyment ... but the books that followed are not.
I'm particularly disappointed with the series that do this ... but have more or less given up on trying to force myself to read an ongoing series simply because the first book was great.
As someone else said ... life is too short ... and the older I get the quicker I find myself giving up on something that I am not enjoying.
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| Posted By : von Darkmoor - 10/20/2007 11:17 AM |
Jeff Stehman said...
A coworker handed me a "great" novel. After reading the back, I asked, "Is this one of those novels where we find out at the end that these aliens are actually human colonists who have forgotten their past?" "No." He lied. I started suspecting it before the end, but moron that I am, I soldiered on. THAT would have pissed me off to no end! My god! How can a 'friend' do that!
I've stated elsewhere my thoughts on this subject. Basically, since a lot of pre-purchase work goes into my purchases - rarely do I 'just' buy a book, though I buy a book almost on a daily average - it's almost an assured thing that I will finish the books I start. It's not to notch my bedpost or belt buckle or pistol grip; it's more of a, there was a reason I decided to read it, prove me right in my decision type philosophy. If it's a series or an author I like there is a bit more leeway allowed. But I've dissed some authors I normally enjoy in reviews of their latest and greatest. It happens.
The biggest title I never could finish was The Red Badge of Courage. I've forgotten the names of the others (mostly), but I still think my total of dropped books is less than a dozen in 30+ years.
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| Posted By : von Darkmoor - 10/20/2007 11:20 AM |
Jeff Edwards said...
I will never touch another book "written" by this "New York Times bestselling author" again. This was my first and last time picking up one of "his" books.
-Jeff Patterson? 
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| Posted By : bleacheddecay - 10/20/2007 10:55 PM | He has written some really good ones but I read one that pissed me off as a reader recently. It put ALL of the rest of his waaaaay to the back of my reading queue. I'm not sure when or if I'll give him another chance.
bleacheddecay |
| Posted By : bleacheddecay - 10/22/2007 8:07 PM | I'm confused.
bleacheddecay |
| Posted By : von Darkmoor - 10/23/2007 2:01 AM | The confusion is my fault, sorry about that. I read Jeff's original ambiguous comments the same day I'd heard in two separate manners statements like 'Back when Patterson wrote his own books' - so I thought it especially ironic if it were he. So I offered the name - and it has since been rejected. My bad.
I am curious as to who it is, as I don't really have a clue.
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| Posted By : bleacheddecay - 10/23/2007 8:58 AM | Thanks for the explanation and I'm curious too!
bleacheddecay |
| Posted By : Hermit - 10/24/2007 9:51 AM | | Well, I made it through 100 pages of that book I earlier mentioned. I quit. Screw 'em! I'm both more and less irked about it now. I'm frustrated to have a book so bad that I won't review it, but that is mitigated by the fact that it was, unlike so many of the books that come my way for review, published by an imprint of Simon & Schuster. This rankles because they have the resources to pick up better books.
Back to my treadmill . . .
Literarily speaking: More prolific than sin! |
| Posted By : Jordan Lapp - 10/24/2007 10:00 AM | I've been working on China Mieville's the Scar for a while now. It's boring as hell, but it's so well written, I keep feeling like I could learn something from it. And I am learning--Better description, better prose. But I'm certainly not learning how to make a book more interesting.
Jordan Lapp
Managing Editor
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| Posted By : Hermit - 10/24/2007 12:30 PM | What makes it boring? Maybe you could learn by negative example - learn by contrast.
I usually only find a book boring if I don't feel anything for the characters or the author feels he or she needs to spoonfeed me the significance of everything. Seems to effect my writing in that some have said they don't see the connections. That is very definitely a matter of intelligence, though some might find this an unfair assessment. But I get rather weary of people thinking and speaking as if intellectual intelligence is the only kind there is. It is an assinine assumption championed by centuries of assinine scholars who worship reason over any other kenning. Wow! That did go tangent/\
Jordan Lapp said...I've been working on China Mieville's the Scar for a while now. It's boring as hell, but it's so well written, I keep feeling like I could learn something from it. And I am learning--Better description, better prose. But I'm certainly not learning how to make a book more interesting.
Literarily speaking: More prolific than sin!
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| Posted By : Jordan Lapp - 10/24/2007 12:38 PM | His characters aren't sympathetic and he writes pages and pages of description. The description is very well done, using beautiful language, but I'm at page 90 or so and I have no idea what the central conflict of the story is.
Jordan Lapp
Managing Editor
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| Posted By : Bill Ward - 10/24/2007 2:34 PM | I didn't find the scar boring, but I agree the characters aren't sympathetic. Many of them are interesting though, although the central character is amongst the least interesting (possibly because she's a normal person in a world of freaks). Generally Mieville's characters are interesting in direct proportion to how freaky they are. The action does pick up a lot after the first hundred pages or so though Jordan, so just stick with it.
Still, he has some fantastic ideas and details, though sometimes the descriptive language seems repetitive and stuck in just to keep the book consistently baroque--but its never poorly done. Minor criticisms aside I think I probably liked the scar better than Perdido.
Is Jeff ever going to tell us about his mystery author? |
| Posted By : Jordan Lapp - 10/24/2007 2:43 PM | He PM'd it to me, so now there's a "conspiracy to withold information" ;)
Jordan Lapp
Managing Editor
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| Posted By : bleacheddecay - 10/24/2007 6:34 PM | Jordan Lapp said...
He PM'd it to me, so now there's a "conspiracy to withold information" ;)
bleacheddecay |
| Posted By : von Darkmoor - 10/24/2007 7:03 PM | well then I guess all that's left to do is demand Jeff PM all the rest of us so we call all act innocent
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| Posted By : von Darkmoor - 10/24/2007 9:31 PM | Thanks for solving the mystery, Jordan. Interesting website that.
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| Posted By : peadarog - 10/26/2007 9:56 AM | That was really interesting!
I hate all these celebs publishing books they haven't written, mainly because, as a new author I have to compete with them for the publisher's publicity money and scarce space on the shelves.
Peadar O Guilin
Available now:
"Twig" From Adventures of Sword and Sorcery #7
"The Bag" in Reckless abandon
"The Mourning Trees" in Black Gate #5
"Fairy Fort" in A Walk on the Darkside
"Hair" in www.feralfiction.com
"Hurdy-Gurdy" in Dark Arts
Coming Soon:
"The Drain" in Weird Tales
"Where Beauty Lies in Wait" in Black Gate
The Inferior from David Fickling Books. Coming 6 September 2007. |
| Posted By : bleacheddecay - 10/26/2007 11:39 AM | Yay! Now I'm in the know. Man, they make his book sound good.
bleacheddecay |
| Posted By : von Darkmoor - 10/27/2007 1:42 PM | sad
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| Posted By : Jordan Lapp - 10/27/2007 4:51 PM | Wow. Captain Irony finds a mentor!
Jordan Lapp
Managing Editor
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| Posted By : humboldthny - 12/2/2007 1:11 AM | My rule is 4 chapters or 40 pages, whichever comes first.
While trying to slog my way through (non-scifi) While I Was Gone I realized that there were better things to do with my life...before that I read all the way through every book.
Some books don't last 40 pages before they get binned....I think my record is 3 pages (I'm too embarrassed to even type that author's name...let's just say I was desperate for reading material and I should have known better).
What irritates me more is when I get through 2/3 of a book when it takes a bad turn and I end up skimming to the end. |
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