On not finishing books


It’s Tuesday, but I couldn’t think of anything for this weeks top ten Tuesday. I wanted to write something though, so I thought I’d write about my thoughts on not finishing a book.

I have had books around me my whole life, I’m from a very book-y family, my mother is a librarian, and I’ve always been given books. I also love books, books are pretty much the best thing in the Universe. For some reason it is deeply ingrained in me that I have to finish books. That if I don’t I haven’t tried hard enough and somehow I’ve failed. I don’t know why. It’s my good-girl-syndrome kicking in.

Today I decided to not finish a book, which is a big deal for me. It’s not the first time or anything, but whenever I do it I feel like I’ve disappointed the author. It’s not like she knows, but you know. I have decided that I need to stop being such a little bitch and if I don’t like something I should just stop and read something else.

Recently I’ve been reading Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi. This is not to bash on it, but just to explain a point. I really liked the concept, it sounded really interesting. A girl named Juliette is trapped in a prison cell, she is in there because whenever she touches someone they get hurt and if she does it long enough she kills them. So she’s been put in jail. She’s not surprisingly going sort of loopy, and she stays in this dark hole with herself and her dark thoughts. It is set in a future world where people are suppressed. There is some sort of terrorist-ish group, who releases Juliette to use her as a weapon, and she meets a dude, named Adam, who works for that group, and she knew him when she was little. Also he can touch her, OMG, sorry, but way obvious. The story is good, it’s a good premise, it’s interesting, and this is the first time I’ve put down a book over writing. Usually when the writing is a little annoying I can still power through it, but this time it was way too much. It’s like a creative writing attempt went very badly wrong. I feel like the writing shouldn’t overpower the story. Unless it’s because the writing is so beautiful you can’t stop reading it. And this book just pissed me off. I’m really sorry to the author, because obviously she wants to use the writing to show how Juliette is sort of going over the edge, it just didn’t work. And that sucks. I still feel sorry that I didn’t finish.

Another book I didn’t finish was John dies @ the end. There it wasn’t the writing specifically that was the problem, but just the book in general. I just didn’t care. I stopped reading it for a while, picked it up again and still was like: meh. And if you can’t hook me after 200 pages I’m sorry I won’t read it. I’m willing to give books a good chance, like 100-200 pages, but you gotta give me something in that time.

I think I need to be better at this, I need to come to terms with the fact that the author won’t know, the author might not like it, but I shouldn’t care. Because I’m the one that has to read the book, and if I don’t like it I should just read something that I actually like and find interesting. And so should everyone. I think if you’ve made a commitment, like you’re meant to review a book then you should obviously read it all the way through, but if it’s for you, then read what you want, and as much as you want.