15 KiB
[Q]At what point do you stop reading something?
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Author: u/DreadChill *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2nx0q2/qat_what_point_do_you_stop_reading_something/
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Score: 7
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Created: 2014-12-01T06:02:12
Post:
So I recently started the Wheel of Time series and I absolutely hated it. I couldn't even get through half of the first book and I'm now considering stopping it all together.
What do you guys do when you encounter something highly recommended which you didn't like? Force yourself through it or just drop it without further thought?
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+5] Time flies like an arrow (22 minutes later)
It depends on a lot of things. If I've been forewarned that the early parts are bad/boring, I'm more likely to stick it out. If it's something that I've spent money on (or otherwise expended some kind of effort on), I'm more likely to try to see it through. If I'm expected to report back (usually because I borrowed a book, and you can't do that without the question of whether you liked it) I'm more likely to give it longer. And I tend to read in "chunks", so the end of the first book of a trilogy is a much more likely stopping place.
As far as reading goes, my time is valuable, and wasting it on something that I don't enjoy is not something I'm willing to do. I haven't been without a backlog of books in a decade. I don't stop reading things without thinking about it first, but I don't tend to hesitate too much when there's something that I'm not enjoying - usually when I'm bored, but also sometimes when I don't like a character. I stopped reading The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant when he , because that shredded the last of my interest in the main character.
I had intended to read The Wheel of Time, and just like you, I stopped midway through the first book, because it didn't seem like anything was happening. I was also motivated by the fact that people had said that somewhere between four and eight books in the series were boring, which shifted the cost-benefit analysis.
Sometimes when people say to just keep reading something that's unenjoyable, I feel like they're suffering from the literary equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome.
u/qznc [+2] Chaos Legion (3 hours later)
Finishing boring books is an example of the sunk cost fallacy. So from a utilitarian point of view, it makes sense to drop a book as soon as the expected joy is greater elsewhere.
Social pressure is a big factor. I only read the first book of the Divergent trilogy, although my family are a big fans. I will watch the movies with my wife. After the Hunger Games, Divergent feels like just more of the same to me. Maybe it's an age thing. Maybe reading into LessWrong spoiled the genre for me.
u/AmeteurOpinions [+1] Finally, everyone was working together. (8 hours later)
I also read Divergent because my classmates were raving about it, and thoughly hated every part. I've never read Twilight, but this was still the worst published fiction I had encountered in a long time. Fortunately, it was a library copy, so costs sunk at all.
u/None [+3] (12 hours later)
As a datapoint: I gave up on Twilight after 32 pages.
u/Rhamni [+1] Aspiring author (a day later)
I take this as a good sign. I also haven't read Twilight, but if it's as bad as people say, then there's hope most readers won't stop reading my own book (when it's done) after three pages to scream at me.
u/qznc [+1] Chaos Legion (8 hours later)
I've only seen the Twilight movies and read the Luminosity fanfic. I believe it would be cruel, because of first-person perspective. Not only does it tell you the stupid actions of Bella, you also have to read her stupid thoughts.
u/ulyssessword [+1] (20 hours later)
There's one significant difference between reading bad books and typical sunk costs for me. Reading one entire book is more valuable to me than reading the first half of two different books of equivalent quality. The expected value of the second half of a book is always higher than the first half because of this.
u/None [+3] (17 minutes later)
I stop reading the moment I find myself not enjoying the material anymore. I mostly notice this when I'd rather do some housework or go to sleep than read any further.
If it's highly recommended by someone I trust, I'll give it one additional attempt after first deciding to quit.
u/None [+3] (4 hours later)
The first reason I have to drop something is lack of engagement. If it's not fun, why am I reading it? But more specifically there's a laundry list of 'sins' fiction can commit that will just immediately cause me to lose interest.
I will say that if you hate WoT now, it will only get much, much worse for you. I'd recommend dropping it ASAP.
u/Fredlage [+4] (5 hours later)
I have a very hard time dropping a story after I've gotten into it, mostly because no matter how boring it is, I keep needing to know how it's going to end. If I'm more then 5 chapters in, the chance of me giving it up are very slim. It takes a truly horrendous turn for the worse for me to give up on a story halfway, and even then, I still need to find out what happens (good thing there's a wiki for almost anything these days).
It's even worse if it's a series of books that start really good and get progressively worse as they go. Dropping a series of books I've gotten into is nearly impossible, what with all the loose ends and hooks and everything else. So far the only series that got so bad I had to drop it was Anita Blake, and even then, I still read the summary of every book when it comes out.
One thing I do to sort of counter this is to put it on hold. I can't do it indefinitely, but if a book is really boring and I can't drop it, I'll put it aside for while and go read something better, than come back to it at a latter time (the crossing Mordor part at the end of Return of the King made me put it on hold for almost six months).
u/Rhamni [+1] Aspiring author (a day later)
This is similar to me, especially on Anita Blake. Started off fairly enjoyable. Six books later, everything is vampire werewolf love triangles and Christian angst.
u/TheAtomicOption [+4] (a day later)
I stop reading (or start skimming if I'm invested in the end of the story already) when...
- The story is spending lots of time explaining something that's not interesting. (i.e. I skimmed through some of the speeches in Atlas Shrugged.)
- The emotions that are too painful like in Hunger Games: Harry Potter: or the awkwardness of pretty much every sitcom episode ever.
- The story simply isn't believable. Some authors completely skip the crisis in their plot. A story of constant success gets old quick. Some authors just suck at dialogue or give characters reactions that real people simply wouldn't have.
- The grammar and diction are wrong, horrible and/or repetitive. I can't read more than one or two books in a row from most authors because they have favorite words and phrases that they reuse a lot. I notice those and start cringing. Change stuff up! Explore new styles! (this causes me problems with some people IRL too)
From a time perspective, I'll rarely slog through more than half an hour of any of the above before giving up. If someone I respect recommended the book I might make it twice that, but ultimately things have to pick up or I'm out.
u/Prezombie [+3] (9 hours later)
I stop reading when I no longer care what happens next, and there are no burning questions I want to find the answer to.
Usually those go hand in hand, but occasionally I don't care about the story and continue on just so that I'll learn more about the world.
This backfires when I get a question that the author never even intends to answer. I read the entire belgariad et al series by David Eddings just so I could get more information on what the gods of that setting were. There were so intriguing by the few details, like how apparently they couldn't heal themselves, so the rare attack that hurt them was always permanent, and how one went mad from grief, and a bunch of characterization about the few gods that actually got on stage for a while.
And once the story ends, they just up and leave for no good reason.
u/Rhamni [+1] Aspiring author (a day later)
What was so bad about the books? I ask because the gods do seem interesting from what you said.
u/Prezombie [+1] (a day later)
They weren't bad per se, the books just felt extremely formulaic and predictable with so little in the way of inspired plot.
u/scruiser [+2] CYOA (9 hours later)
I asked for the first three books last Christmas. I got about halfway or a third of the way through the first one and then stopped (Christmas break had ended so I was back to school and had less time, and they were boring). I had pinged through Worm that September I recall. It kept occurring to me that Worm had managed to keep me up till the wee hours of the morning every night I had read it, and the wheel of time books just seemed to pointlessly drag on in comparison.
u/Rhamni [+1] Aspiring author (a day later)
The audiobooks I found were much more managable.
u/None [+2] (14 hours later)
When the expected utility gain from continuing to read is less than the opportunity cost incurred by the time spent reading.
Sure, it may be a good story, and I may enjoy it more if I continue reading (as others may insist). But is it at present the best way of fulfilling my literary desires? Usually this isn't an explicit calculation, but more of a gut feel.
I tend to juggle books around when they slow down, but as I finish more engaging stories I usually come back if I have a reasonable expectation of enjoyment. Case in point, I've been worming my way through Worm for a few months now.
Goes the same for other media as well.
u/Charlie___ [+1] (7 hours later)
If it's been recommended I'm more likely to stick with it, but for example I ditched Joe Abercrombie's First Law series after the first book because I didn't care about the plot, and the only characters I found interesting probably only had work put into them so that bad stuff could happen to them later.
On the other hand, I did enjoy the Wheel of Time. But hey, if it doesn't float your boat, that's fine. I'd recommend taking a break with the intent of finishing the first book, but I don't know your specifics.
I'll admit my experience is colored by my brother and (step)sister, who both had read The Colour of Magic, and both disliked Terry Pratchett. And then I got them Thief of Time and Going Postal for christmas and they decided that maybe there was something to this fellow after all.
u/None [+1] (8 hours later)
link to wheel of time?
u/eaglejarl [+6] (9 hours later)
It's a dead tree series by Robert Jordan. The first book is "The Eye of the World"; there's...16?...books in the series and they are HUGE. IIRC, the shortest is 600 pages.
When I read them, the first 50 pages were mind-shatteringly boring. I was about to put it down when things suddenly picked up and got very engaging.
Fair warning: Jordan has a phobia about paying off plot coupons. He just keeps handing out new ones without ever resolving the old ones. Sometimes he forgets about things too -- Perrin, a main character in 1-3, is not even mentioned in book 4. And so on. It gets annoying after a while, but at least the whole series is out now.
u/chthonicSceptre [+6] Highly Unlikely (9 hours later)
dead forest series
FTFY
u/eaglejarl [+1] (9 hours later)
:>
u/Evilness42 [+2] And even myth is long forgotten... (11 hours later)
There's 14 books in the series. There were also plans to make 2 more (smaller) series(serii?) that focused on Mat and Perrin after the normal plot was over, but one of history's most tragic cases of Author Existence Failure in history has cut that off for good. Tragic. Though I probably wouldn't have read the Perrin one.
Edit: What the heck just happened? The comment just cloned itself like 5 times.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (12 hours later)
Jordan died, yes, but he knew he was dying. He sat down with Brian Sanderson and made sure that Sanderson knew enough about the plan for the series that he could finish it.
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (15 hours later)
Brandon Sanderson, not Brian. Also he was selected after Jordan's death by Jordan's widow Harriett, though he was given copious notes that had been made on the series, and much of the end of the book had been discussed between Jordan and Harriett (Harriett was also the series editor).
u/eaglejarl [+1] (16 hours later)
Brandon Sanderson, not Brian.
D'oh! Right, thank you. Brain cramp.
[Harriett]
Oh, cool. I knew none of that. Thanks for telling me.
u/Evilness42 [+1] And even myth is long forgotten... (13 hours later)
Yeah, I know that. I'm talking about two other series that may(or may not) have eventually been written at some point in the future that now will never be. One was supposed/rumoured to be about Mat with the Seanchan and there was something else to do with Perrin.
u/alexanderwales [+1] Time flies like an arrow (9 hours later)
The Wheel of Time is an epic fantasy series by Robert Jordan spanning fourteen books (the last three of which were written by Brandon Sanderson following Robert Jordan's death). It starts with The Eye of the World.
u/Evilness42 [+1] And even myth is long forgotten... (11 hours later)
I've gone through periods in my life where I've been so bored that I've read mind shatteringly boring stuff for so long I don't remember what an interesting book is like. I generally have to force myself to put the thing down and purge it from my memory, backtracking like several books/authors/recommendations to get out of the dark and terrifying path I've found myself on and find something I like. Most of the time, I don't even notice if it's boring.
Though, I don't actually find WOT boring. I consider it one of the best things I've every read. Eh. Whatever floats your boat.
u/MoralRelativity [+1] (13 hours later)
Books mere my constant companions as I grew up. At that stage I always, always, always finished what I started. It's only in the later part of my life that I've been ableto give up on something that I'm not enjoying.