THIS BOOK’S CRAP, LET'S SLASH THE SEATS
Jul. 24th, 2015 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogQuestion of the day [via LJ’s Writer’s Block]:
I should preface my answer with the disclaimer that until recently, quitting a book was not an option for me. I had this concept embedded in my brain that if I pick up a book, I’m committed to finishing it. One big reason for that was that I usually buy books. So I always felt it would be a waste of money not to finish something I paid for.
This concept induced a lot of unnecessary suffering on my part. But at some point I got over it, and realized I was under no obligation to finish any book that just isn't working for me. That said, I try not to let that become an excuse to give up on any book that doesn’t click immediately. Some books do take a little effort to get into, and sometimes those turn out to be well worth the effort.
As for when I decide to quit a book, the criteria vary. According to my Goodreads profile, I’ve read 186 books since I joined at the start of 2013. I’ve quit five of them. Two of them were for pretentious wordiness – writers who seem to construct unnecessarily complex sentences with the apparent goal of showing how great they are at constructing complex sentences. Which is fine if it flows at a respectable pace, but not if it obscures what you’re actually trying to tell the reader and bogs everything down – all under the assumption that the reader has nothing better to do than admire your intellectual gymnastic wordplay. Which is why I won’t be reading Norman Mailer or David Foster Wallace ever again.
A related issue is wordiness in general – writers who aren't obviously trying to show off but still tend to write very dense prose that is like wading through molasses. I’m one of those people who believes that reading a book should be for enjoyment, not work (unless I’m reading a book for work purposes, like research, for example). If I have to spend half an hour on one page to figure out what the author is describing, I’m not enjoying the book, I’m working at it.
On the flip side, readable doesn't mean good. I have read a lot of bad books simply because they were very readable, which at least meant I wouldn’t have to spend much time getting through them. The Da Vinci Code comes to mind. Terrible book, but Dan Brown at least knows how to keep the pages turning.
Then there are books where I simply cannot identify with the characters or their actions. Algis Budrys’ Rogue Moon is said to be an influential SF classic, but the characters seemed to be talking in non-sequiturs or lengthy philosophical expositions, and doing things that made no sense to me.
And once in awhile, I get a book that turns out to be something I didn’t expect to the point that it throws me off completely. I tried one of G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown mystery anthologies, but instead of sleuth stories, they were more like vignettes where something happens that leads people to wrong conclusions, and Father Brown is the only one who knows what’s going on the whole time because he has a piece of information the other characters don’t. I can see getting away with that once, but with four or five stories in a row following the same formula, it seemed like cheating.
Obviously, in most cases the fault lies more with me than the author. I should also add that there are cases where I couldn’t finish a book the first time, but tried again later and enjoyed it.
One example is Berlin Game, Len Deighton’s first Bernard Samson spy novel. It was my first time trying Deighton, and I just couldn’t get into it. Later, I tried another Deighton book (Horse Underwater, from the Harry Palmer series) and loved it. After that, I tried Berlin Game again and ended up reading the entire series. I couldn’t tell you why, exactly – I suppose it’s a case of being in the right frame of mind to read a given story by a given author at a certain period of time. It’s kind of like how I didn’t enjoy reading many classic novels in high school because I wasn’t old enough to appreciate them. (And because my teacher often took the fun out of reading them.)
So some of the books that I put down, I may pick back up again someday. Which also makes it easier to put them down when they’re not working.
Put it down,
This is dF
I should preface my answer with the disclaimer that until recently, quitting a book was not an option for me. I had this concept embedded in my brain that if I pick up a book, I’m committed to finishing it. One big reason for that was that I usually buy books. So I always felt it would be a waste of money not to finish something I paid for.
This concept induced a lot of unnecessary suffering on my part. But at some point I got over it, and realized I was under no obligation to finish any book that just isn't working for me. That said, I try not to let that become an excuse to give up on any book that doesn’t click immediately. Some books do take a little effort to get into, and sometimes those turn out to be well worth the effort.
As for when I decide to quit a book, the criteria vary. According to my Goodreads profile, I’ve read 186 books since I joined at the start of 2013. I’ve quit five of them. Two of them were for pretentious wordiness – writers who seem to construct unnecessarily complex sentences with the apparent goal of showing how great they are at constructing complex sentences. Which is fine if it flows at a respectable pace, but not if it obscures what you’re actually trying to tell the reader and bogs everything down – all under the assumption that the reader has nothing better to do than admire your intellectual gymnastic wordplay. Which is why I won’t be reading Norman Mailer or David Foster Wallace ever again.
A related issue is wordiness in general – writers who aren't obviously trying to show off but still tend to write very dense prose that is like wading through molasses. I’m one of those people who believes that reading a book should be for enjoyment, not work (unless I’m reading a book for work purposes, like research, for example). If I have to spend half an hour on one page to figure out what the author is describing, I’m not enjoying the book, I’m working at it.
On the flip side, readable doesn't mean good. I have read a lot of bad books simply because they were very readable, which at least meant I wouldn’t have to spend much time getting through them. The Da Vinci Code comes to mind. Terrible book, but Dan Brown at least knows how to keep the pages turning.
Then there are books where I simply cannot identify with the characters or their actions. Algis Budrys’ Rogue Moon is said to be an influential SF classic, but the characters seemed to be talking in non-sequiturs or lengthy philosophical expositions, and doing things that made no sense to me.
And once in awhile, I get a book that turns out to be something I didn’t expect to the point that it throws me off completely. I tried one of G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown mystery anthologies, but instead of sleuth stories, they were more like vignettes where something happens that leads people to wrong conclusions, and Father Brown is the only one who knows what’s going on the whole time because he has a piece of information the other characters don’t. I can see getting away with that once, but with four or five stories in a row following the same formula, it seemed like cheating.
Obviously, in most cases the fault lies more with me than the author. I should also add that there are cases where I couldn’t finish a book the first time, but tried again later and enjoyed it.
One example is Berlin Game, Len Deighton’s first Bernard Samson spy novel. It was my first time trying Deighton, and I just couldn’t get into it. Later, I tried another Deighton book (Horse Underwater, from the Harry Palmer series) and loved it. After that, I tried Berlin Game again and ended up reading the entire series. I couldn’t tell you why, exactly – I suppose it’s a case of being in the right frame of mind to read a given story by a given author at a certain period of time. It’s kind of like how I didn’t enjoy reading many classic novels in high school because I wasn’t old enough to appreciate them. (And because my teacher often took the fun out of reading them.)
So some of the books that I put down, I may pick back up again someday. Which also makes it easier to put them down when they’re not working.
Put it down,
This is dF
