Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.
What determines whether or not you finish a book you're reading? Do you review books you didn't finish?
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The short answer to this one is "the first few pages."
For most of my reading, if a book doesn't have my interest by thirty or so pages in, I figure it's not a book for me, and I just let it go. That said, it doesn't happen to me very often because I know me pretty well by this point, and I seldom pick up a book that isn't for me.
Most of the reads I don't finish weren't just personal picks, but something I was reading for a class, or for a book club, or because someone gifted it to me. Sometimes those are worth finishing, even if I don't enjoy them, for the social bit: talking about books with other people is one of my great joys in life, probably right under writing book and reading books!
One book I've made multiple attempts at and never finished is Ulysses by James Joyce. That book might be my personal reading nemesis. I've made it through plenty of dense classic novels in my time, but this one I couldn't handle.
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Generally, I don't review books I didn't finish. That doesn't seem fair. Maybe whatever was frustrating or annoying me in that opening made sense later and, had I continued, I would have come to appreciate what the author was doing.
How about you? Do you finish what you started in your reading life?
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