How far into a book do you read before deciding it isn't for you?

Sometimes I’ll give it to the midpoint if I really want to be generous, and sometimes all it takes is two pages. But most commonly I’ll give it one night’s bedtime reading, about an hour and a half. If it doesn’t win me in that time, it’s gone by the next night.

I usually give them at least one chapter, two if the first one is short.

If I start a book, I read it through to the end. Good or bad.

Sometimes all it takes is a couple of pages. (Yay Kindle previews).

Not finishing a book is painful in a way. It depends upon how the book came into my possession. If a friend gave or loaned it to me, there is an obgliation to finish it.

I’ve learned to not take on the responsiblity of reading a book just because someone else really enjoyed it. Literature is just like any other art venue…different strokes for different folks.

I’ll pretty much finish a book in the hopes it suddenly reveals itself to be a gem. Sadly this didn’t happen with the Michael Savage or Newt Gingrich books my fiancee goosed me to try.

@bkcunningham There are some books that I have been unable to finish, not because I didn’t like them but because they were difficult, though in those cases I usually will eventually finish them at some poing, but I’m like you. I start the book, I finish it! It’s like adopting an animal for me; I’ve made the commitment, I’m going to see it through! :-)

I don’t recall too many I have given up on. I read it till the end. Same with Movies, not many I have walked out of.

I give a book 2 pages. If the author hasn’t hooked me, it’s doubtful I would enjoy the rest.

Two chapters or the whole book.

I go about 2 chapters. Some books just start slow. I move on to something else if I’m not feeling it by then. There are too many good books to waste time on the bad.

A middling bad book can turn me off in two pages. A really awful book, paradoxically, can sometimes keep my interest for longer – just to see “how bad can it get?”

But I can also usually tell within the first two pages that I’m really going to enjoy it, barring plot twists that twist it right into the ground and other unexpected disasters.

I have to finish it first.

One middle section skim, back to the first three pages and if the author is speaking something that is akin to Tolstoy’s character intro or Roman Polanski’s film complexities, I realize it would be a major investment in time and Tylenol to continue I concede. Books are meant to be like friends and some of them are just too long in getting to know.

I’ll read it until I find myself either not wanting to pick up and doing something else instead, or until I’m doing less reading and more daydreaming therefore I’m having to read the same paragraph/page repeatedly.
I stopped reading for years because I thought I either had to finish every book I picked up or it had to be educational. Now I have no problem abandoning a book. I’d rather do that then abandon reading.

@smilingheart1: Oh my, there was a Roman Polanski biography I attempted in 2008 that was abandoned. Imagine that.

It depends on what others tell me.
I was told “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” was pretty dry for the first 100 pages, so I gave it plenty of time. When I hit 200, I was still bored with it, but just after it got better. By the time I finished it, I had long since figured out what had happened. I am sorry I spent so much time on it.
I got about 400 pages into a John Adams biography, when I finally set it aside. I hope to get back to it.
I have another book on Charles Chaplin and a writer (Agee?) who wanted to make a Nuclear War movie with him. Great story, but I set it aside around 200 pages.

After a few pages, I get very suspicious but will slog on a little longer in order to be fair. LIfe’s too short and filled with really wonderful authors begging for my attention.

Almost immediately. Sometimes, I check out the insert pages on Amazon in the “Look inside” option and if I don’t like it, I don’t even buy it. I am very particular with what I will actually lend the attention span energy and brain cells to read.

The last book I bought was Quantum Physics for poets. I didn’t actually bother looking inside because I felt the title was interesting and self explanitory.

There is hardly any poetry in it at all… but the physics were addressed in such a way that made it poetic so… I got it, and it is brilliant.

If I begin to read a book, I finish it. Even if it is horrible my brain will not allow me to quit until I’ve read the balance. If it weren’t for this quirk I would have never made it through a book on oceanography I read that was written in the 70’s. It actually turned out to be a very interesting read.

This is a most interesting question and the answers even more so. Every book that I have enjoyed, I enjoyed from the first paragraph. So for me to read the first chapter is a lengthy assessment. If it doesn’t grab me in the beginning, I am not willing to read boring page after boring page in hopes that it will grab me halfway through.

I have more to read than I will ever get through in a lifetime and I am rarely without a book, Superfreakanomics at present. So why should I waste time on something that does not interest me intensely?

I’ll read the first chapter (though, most books, if the first 2 pages don’t get me interested, that’s a bad sign). Maybe the first 3 chapters if it’s not great, but it’s also not bad, just really “eh”. This is, of course, we’re assuming fiction here – non-fiction can be notoriously bad writing, but having good info, so I’ll do more of a skimming of 3–5 select chapters (whatever I can do in 30 minutes). But for fiction, I’m seriously picky, and have no desire to read books that don’t make me want to stay up late reading “just one more chapter”.

I almost always finish a book if I start it. I have given up on very few. Jeruba gave me permission to quit reading something I wasn’t finding engrossing, and I found that rather liberating. I am a dork.

@augustlan I didn’t realize I could simply ask Jeruba for permission to stop reading a book just because I don’t really like it. I will PM her in the next day or so to arrange that. I’m kind of a dork too :-)

It really was funny. It was in a box of books she sent me, and we were discussing the books when I told her I just wasn’t enjoying this particular one. She thought I was a nut for pushing ahead. Dorks unite!

I usually read the whole thing even if I don’t like it much, not sure why. There are exceptions. But if it really sucks I won’t get passed the first few pages.