What makes you give up on a book?

[pmmg]

The Belgariad has comical stupid fights? I dont remember that. And for that it was tossed across the room?

I seem to recall a dragon getting loose and all the adults doing nothing in the Harry Potter verse. That seemed pretty stupid to me.

 

[Gurkhal]

The Belgariad has comical stupid fights? I dont remember that. And for that it was tossed across the room?

I seem to recall a dragon getting loose and all the adults doing nothing in the Harry Potter verse. That seemed pretty stupid to me.

Then it must have been a long time since you read these books. The Angaraks are just comically incompetent and stupid beyond belief, at least in the Belgariad since they do shape up considerably in the Malloreon. They may have a flash of competence now and then but generally I get that they are more of a threat to themselves than to the good guys.

The big "epic" battle in the end of the Belgariad for exampel was the reason my book flew across the room and into a wall. Luckily it was a papperback or else my parents would not have been amused by the dent or mark in said wall.

 

[pmmg]

Well...I managed to get through it without throwing anything against a wall. I dont think my adult self would do that either.

I hope little Garion was okay, though, If I recall, he was kind of a Giant in that final battle.

 

[Gurkhal]

Well...I managed to get through it without throwing anything against a wall. I dont think my adult self would do that either.

I hope little Garion was okay, though, If I recall, he was kind of a Giant in that final battle.

Garion was ok and on my adult re-read I don't take as much issue with Eddings' different take on how to make good villains than what I like to read about.

In my re-read I'm going along for a ride knowing that the driver and I have very different preferences and I leave it at that and enjoy what is good instead of getting bothered with that I don't like.

 

[pmmg]

The Belgariad is aimed at a younger audience. I think it would fade in luster as one gets older.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

All I remember about the Belgariad is... rrrrrr ummmmm, the series name! I doubt I could read them as an adult, but I at least made it through the first series as a youngster.

 

[Ned Marcus]

The Belgariad is aimed at a younger audience. I think it would fade in luster as one gets older.

Probably true. I'm not sure as I've never gone back, but I did enjoy when I was about 20.

 

[Mad Swede]

It's nearly 40 years since I first read The Belgariad. I enjoyed it then, and I still enjoy reading it now. When I first read it I was young, a long way from home, and it had me hooked. I wasn't looking for realism at the time, I wanted escapism. These days I enjoy reading it for other reasons, many of which have to do with what I've learnt about storytelling. Those books have good pacing, good characterisation and good dialogue. The plot is good but not original. And the books use just about every fantasy story trope (or cliche) going without taking them terribly seriously. It isn't serious, realistic, grim fantasy. It's an example of well-written escapism. Which is of course what makes it popular.

 

[The Dark One]

It's rare I give up on a book. I was probably about 40 the first time it happened and it was really painful - but the book was even more painful than my existential angst so into the bin it went.

I should've known better. The cover featured a weird looking alien in a diving mask and snorkel dancing on a beach, but I must've been interested in the blurb notwithstanding my misgivings re the cover. It was farking dreadful - meandering all over the place and nothing happening beyond descriptions of featureless lagoons.

It was liberating though. Having killed once, I am far more ruthless when it comes to abandoning stories which aint worth wasting my time. I like to feel that I am in safe hands with an author and soon as I doubt that it's a slippery slope.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I'm pretty predictable. I'm not a forgiving reader. At least on my own time, of which there is very little, so when I actually find a moment to indulge myself I'm looking for quality. I've DNF'd books over rookie mistakes. Misspellings on the first few pages. Word salads. Illegible formatting. Bad covers won't even get a click out of me. I'm a terrible cover snob, but in my philosophy if a writer won't invest at least in a good cover, they don't have faith in their own work and their own professionalism OR they don't know how and don't care to find out. Oh! And we have my personal favorite: the wrong information. Writers do homework for a living, and if you show this old teacher you didn't do the assignment, you won't get another read from me.

 

[jhmcmullen]

I’m in a book club right now, and sadly there are a number of books I have not finished. Some of them I’m just hit or miss on the author — everyone else in the group loves all Becky Chambers, and I only like some — and sometimes there isn’t enough craft to overcome the eight deadly words (as spake by Dorothy Heydt: “I Don’t Care What Happens To These People!”).

Often I give up because of an accumulation of small mistakes: I lose faith in the author. I suppose I give up on some books where there’s a big reveal that, oh, things don’t act like they do in the mundane world because of thing x (”I call it a horse, but it has six legs and is made of steel!”) but that doesn’t get revealed until page 238.

I might give up because it’s a multi-book series and I discover that no storyline is going to be resolved in this book. Sure, Lord of the Rings got broken into three volumes because of publishing tech restrictions, but you can do better than that in 2024. (More often I check the back of the first book. If it says, “Yes, the so-and-so is defeated but we still have to deal with this,” that is more acceptable than, “Hanging upside down over the chasm, he knew that book two was inevitable.” Nope.)

I might give up because what the author thought was an interesting alternating viewpoint story is to me one interesting story intertwined with something boring, so I’m really getting only half the book I thought I was.]

I dislike prologues. If I see a prologue and it involves the main characters, I immediately wonder why it couldn’t be chapter 1 If it doesn’t involve the main characters, I wonder if the author couldn’t somehow work the information into the story proper. (There are valid reasons for prologues; providing backstory is almost never one. I think if I ever write a book with a prologue, it will have a subtitle like, “Skip this if you already know the world” Or “Yes, there’s magic in this. It won’t show up until page 238, so you get to see some now.”)

I might avoid a book entirely if the book seems to be the American Revolution In Space (very common in SF), or Part 1 of an unfinished series, or victim of Third Artist Syndrome. (I first encountered the idea in the critical writings of Jo Walton: it’s a trope gone wrong.)

In general: Does the work seem to be getting to the point, or do I have the feeling that the author knows what he or she is doing? If there’s what seems to be a digression, has the author done enough other stuff right that I’m reasonably confident the story will get back to the point?

 

[Finchbearer]

This is why I can’t be bothered with book clubs.

 

[JBCrowson]

I have tried hard to finish several Brandon Sanderson Books, but I have just found them unbearably dull. Julian May's Golden Torc was the other CNF. At least with that one I liked the idea, just the execution was a bit of a Rich Tea Biscuit.