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Once upon a time -- inspired very much by Joanna Russ in her How to Suppress Women's Writing -- I used to make myself finish absolutely every book I started, except in the rare cases that I found the book so viscerally upsetting I actually could not finish. I do not think this was the worst habit to get into while I was young; it came hard on the heels of an adolescence in which I refused to read anything that was not a particularly narrow niche of fantasy novel, so it expanded my horizons a good deal and introduced me to some sorts of books I would not otherwise have encountered. A few years ago, however, I decided that what with my reading life being finite and the number of books anything but finite, it was better to stop when I had decided that the book was really, truly not for me rather than to spend more minutes and hours finishing it resentfully. As Jo Walton so memorably has said, one does not need to eat to the bottom of the jar to know that one dislikes the marmalade.
Thus in the last few years I have become increasingly comfortable with putting aside books that I do not like, and as a result I have been starting to identify what it is in books (other than terrible, terrible prose) that makes me not wish to keep reading them. For instance, I have little patience for stories of mediocre white men, even when those stories are written by women who include a wealth of concrete setting details that otherwise I would love -- see When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of Earth by Fernanda Eberstadt as example. I also become impatient with a certain sort of well made novel, one in which all the boxes are too obviously ticked off and there are no surprises upon any level; Imbolo Mbue's Behold the Dreamers eventually fell into that category for me, although I got a surprising 80% through before I got tired of it. The doubling of the theme was good, but it just went on too long, I found, although obviously a large percentage of readers disagree with me, as they are welcome to so do.
Hmmmn, what else? Only one more just now, I think; for the moment I am still reading The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks, but I do not think I will make it through; the faux-grandiose register is really grating on me, even though I love the idea of historical fiction about the biblical David, especially as there is someone of that name in our system and the opportunities for teasing him as I read are nigh-endless -- and he is more or less a brother to me, so teasing him is a duty which I often sadly neglect due to lack of time, but I still do not think this responsibility will be enough to get me through the book.
Thus in the last few years I have become increasingly comfortable with putting aside books that I do not like, and as a result I have been starting to identify what it is in books (other than terrible, terrible prose) that makes me not wish to keep reading them. For instance, I have little patience for stories of mediocre white men, even when those stories are written by women who include a wealth of concrete setting details that otherwise I would love -- see When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of Earth by Fernanda Eberstadt as example. I also become impatient with a certain sort of well made novel, one in which all the boxes are too obviously ticked off and there are no surprises upon any level; Imbolo Mbue's Behold the Dreamers eventually fell into that category for me, although I got a surprising 80% through before I got tired of it. The doubling of the theme was good, but it just went on too long, I found, although obviously a large percentage of readers disagree with me, as they are welcome to so do.
Hmmmn, what else? Only one more just now, I think; for the moment I am still reading The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks, but I do not think I will make it through; the faux-grandiose register is really grating on me, even though I love the idea of historical fiction about the biblical David, especially as there is someone of that name in our system and the opportunities for teasing him as I read are nigh-endless -- and he is more or less a brother to me, so teasing him is a duty which I often sadly neglect due to lack of time, but I still do not think this responsibility will be enough to get me through the book.
