Today we address that elephant in the room, books we hate. Maybe they’re not in the room. Maybe they’ve been stuffed under sofas or tossed in boxes or surreptitiously donated to the library…but did you finish it the first time you picked it up?
Robin Lythgoe
Author of As the Crow Flies
We’ve all come across them—those books that are so badly written you wonder if the author was even an earthling. Or, assuming that they weren’t hatched on another planet, if they bothered to attend grade school. Or if they live in a sensory deprivation chamber and have no freaking idea what the real world is like. The first pages of such a book are usually painful. Do you risk the agony of finishing the entire book? You want to know my philosophy?
Patricia Reding
Author of Oathtaker
Do I finish books that I start, but hate? I can answer this question with a single title: Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. I found Moby Dick to be utterly, incomprehensibly, annoyingly, mind-bogglingly boring—and odd—and downright awful. I hated it. Hated it! Nothing, nothing anyone could say about a color, or its significance, or what Melville may have mean to symbolize through the use of a color, could ever possibly resurrect this title for me. I found a solid 70% of the work to be complete nonsense—a waste of ink and a waste of paper. Lest I be mistaken, let me put it simply: I truly and completely abhor this work. Perhaps more than any other I’ve ever read. So . . .
Parker Broaddus
Author of A Hero’s Curse & Nightrage Rising
What to do with a book you hate? Or, even worse, a book that was just, ‘meh.’ It doesn’t even warrant the energy of hurling it against the opposite wall. It barely deserves a sigh and a shrug, and certainly won’t get a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Too much effort for a story that simply didn’t captivate. So what do you do with that story? Are you a finisher? A staller? Or a tosser?
I used to be a finisher. To count a book as finished on my reading list, I have to read from cover to cover. Since quantity on the list was important to me, I pushed myself to finish whatever I started. Reading part-way through a book and setting it aside was a waste of quantity-list time. Besides, I was simultaneously studying, why didn’t I like this book? The question was a good one, and pushed me to be better in my own writing.
But that was then. And this is now. I admit, to my chagrin, I often do not finish books that fail to capture me. I don’t think this makes me any richer – I think the discipline to push myself through tedious, hard, or even unlikable material helps me grow as a person, a reader, and a writer.
At least, I’d like to think it does. Most of the time. Unless it’s the Divergent series, or, even worse, the Twilight series. I read the first of the Twilight books. It was like trying to swim through pink taffy. I couldn’t take another description of Edward’s face. But I finished it. As for the Divergent series, it wasn’t as bad as Twilight, but it trailed off after book one. Truth be told, I didn’t feel better, or richer for having finished either Twilight or the Divergent series. In some ways, I felt poorer. So maybe finishing the story isn’t worth it. Maybe there are some tales that needn’t be retold.
What do you think? My question for the intro still stands – are you a finisher? A staller? Or a tosser? Comment below!
I guessed correctly about you as well, Parker! I like this: “Reading part-way through a book and setting it aside was a waste of quantity-list time. Besides, I was simultaneously studying, why didn’t I like this book? The question was a good one, and pushed me to be better in my own writing.” I understand completely. As to seeing a read through to the bitter end, I find that this particularly applies for me when reading a classic. There is a reason a work has withstood the test of time, so I want to figure out what that reason is/was. Most of the time is becomes fairly obvious. Occasionally . . . okay once, the reason completely escaped me. (I would be referring, of course, to Moby Dick!”)
You also said: “I admit, to my chagrin, I often do not finish books that fail to capture me. I don’t think this makes me any richer – I think the discipline to push myself through tedious, hard, or even unlikable material helps me grow as a person, a reader, and a writer.” This, also, I appreciate. Sometimes the lesson I learn is that other people may have other ways–ways that differ from my own–but ways that are valuable. They just happen to be . . . different. The works others create may not jive with me from the outset, but by pushing myself through, I stand to learn more about what others do like, as well as what might not work for others. In addition, I may in the end be rewarded with something entirely unexpected . . .