I have started, but should I finish?

Should you always finish reading a book, even if you’re not enjoying it? More than that, if you’re actually hating it and find every page almost painful to read? Okay, so maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but you know what I mean.

 

Who hasn’t started reading a book, full of enthusiasm and good intentions, only to be disappointed within a few pages or chapters? Sometimes you can push through that and get to the end, which is either a relief or quite rewarding if the book turns out to be better than initial expectations. There have been occasions where it’s taken me two or three attempts to read a novel – Kafka’s The Trial comes to mind – but it’s worth it in the end. But what about those books which don’t get any better?

 

I know some people believe that they must finish any book they’ve started, as if somehow it’s wrong to abandon it. Maybe they feel that, given that the author has put so much effort into writing it, they should put a similar effort into seeing it through to the end? I’m not one of those people.

 

I have a vague recollection that I used to be – the naivety of youth – but I’m now of the opinion that life’s too short and there are too many good books to be read to waste time, effort and enthusiasm on books that I am not enjoying.

 

I remember trying to read The Satanic Verses back in the late 1980s when it was published – the naivety of youth again! I was full of self-righteous indignation about the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie, and bought the book in a show of solidarity. I tried reading it a couple of times but found, after about 100 pages, that it became totally incomprehensible. Then, like a sign from God, I read a newspaper columnist who admitted the same thing and confessed that he hadn’t finished it, so I cut out the column, put it inside The Satanic Verses, and buried my copy away in a book shelf where it remains to this day.

 

Since then, I have been firmly in the camp of those people who abandon books they’re not enjoying it. It happened on holiday when I started reading Robert Ludlum’s The Road to Gandolfo – it’s a thriller about a plot to kidnap the Pope and hold him for randsom. It is a deliberately far-fetched plot, but even so, it was too much for me. The book has now taken up residence in a book-swap stall in Santa Ponsa.

 

Conversely, I also read two other books – Stephen King’s Under the Dome and Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith – which were both brilliant. I couldn’t put either of them down, and I would recommend them to anyone.

 

As a reader, it is my prerogative to decide whether to finish a book or not, although I suppose that, looking at it as a writer, I would be dismayed at the thought that anyone was hating the experience of reading my book so much that they abandoned it… but no-one would ever do that, would they?