Not Finishing Books

 

I've been thinking about finishing and not finishing books for a while, and decided last week to write something about it.

I used to feel guilty about not finishing books. So much so that I would always put them down with the page dog-eared, with the intention to go back to them as soon as I was in the mood again. But that time would never come, and not finishing them would be more of an accident than an intention.

But in the last year or so, my feelings on this have changed.

One of the reasons that I've been going through a slump with reading is because I haven't enjoyed what I've been reading. I've picked up books because they're popular and have rave reviews, and so I feel like I have to finish them so I can understand what everyone else sees in the book.

So I've started not finishing books.

Putting them down, putting them away, with no intention of picking them up again - at least until I'm so far away from the book that I can't remember why I didn't like it in the first place.

And again, when I started doing this, I felt guilty. As if, because I had bought it, I owed it to myself to finish. But as everyone who's ever finished a book that they've disliked from the beginning knows, the ending is hardly ever worth it.

I never do this lightly. When I decide not to finish a book, I take into account how long I've been reading the book, how many pages I've managed to read, and whether anything could come up that could make me regret my decision. For example, if it's a thriller that could have a twist ending, I generally keep reading to get to that point. But if it's a straightforward romance, I usually feel better about leaving it.

I've been thinking about this because I have just not finished a really popular book that has recently come out, and felt guilty because of all the rave reviews. Maybe that I was missing something huge, or that I would fall in love with it if I just kept going.

So I stopped that (with a view of going back to it), and picked up the next book in my list, which has ended up being one of my absolute favourite reads of the year. So I'd say that sometimes, not finishing a book is definitely worth it.

Life's too short to read a bad book.