Because I'm reading a book and I don't think I like it.

[threeplusfire]

These are the sort of things that bring me to a screeching halt on a Saturday night. I'm reading a book and I don't think I really like it. I don't know if it is the translation, the subject, the style or just me. I hate to stop reading something once I've started. I've only quite a handful of books. So I'm conflicted on whether I devote more time to trying to like it, or if I give up and find something else to read that I'll enjoy more. So the only good thing to do was to make a poll.

[Poll #1641537]

Comments

[awdrey-gore.livejournal.com]

Here's my comment at length:

I almost never stop reading a book once I've started it. It is a weird personality quirk but I simply have to finish a book once I've started it. I may read it in small spurts, I may skip small bits if it's completely over my head (a recent book about how archeology proves alien beings shaped the modern world comes to mind - one chapter was so dense it had its own gravitational pull), but I just have to finish it.

There are a few exceptions. While I can stomach certain bad ideology if it is old ideology or there is some oddness to it (Nazi spaceships, Jungian misogyny, etc.), the only book I can recall ceasing reading in recent memory was a ridiculous polemic about how multiculturalism (she meant cultural relativism but was too stupid to know it), was ruining the western world by making us all adolescents who never grow up. Bill Clinton wore a baseball cap when he jogged but Cary Grant wore flannel suits with double breasted coats in his movie roles so is it not clear America is doomed? Her argument was so flawed that within 20 pages I had to stop. It insulted every ounce of intelligence I have. I still wrote a 4000 word review of the piece of shit based on the horrors in the first chapter.

Otherwise, I wade through it. I was like this before I declared my intention to read every book I read.