Gave Up on Giving Up Until ...

How often do you give up on a book you've started? 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, my response to that question - asked of me recently by a new friend - is different today than it would have been if asked of me at earlier points in my reading life. How about you? Can you identify any discreet phases you've moved through as a reader when you were either more or less inclined to give up on books you'd started?    

As a young adult, I routinely gave up on many books I'd started. But until I carefully considered how to answer my friend's question, I didn't fully realize how my impatience played a large part in that. Then, as I dug deeper, it became clear that much of my impatience was closely tied to immaturity as a reader and insecurity as a thinker. Well into my thirties, any book that regularly challenged me via references I didn't immediately comprehend was impatiently abandoned. Bottom line: If an author knew a lot of things I didn't, I gave up. Aside from insecurity, what could explain this? 

Although not certain when this earlier-in-life reflex began to shift, I do recall a few things that I now equate with my growth as a reader and thinker. The first was a deepening respect for the views of John Leonard, a prominent NY Times book critic. Also, I started trusting the opinions of people who read more widely than me, like my sister. This led me to work harder at finishing things that I would have jettisoned a few years earlier. I can even remember the first book I returned to after giving up on it at least twice before - One Hundred Years of Solitude. Soon after finishing that and recognizing some of my other earlier surrenders were likely a mistake, I decided to give up on giving up if either a respected critic or a trusted reader told me a book was worth some effort. I've never regretted that decision and use the same reasoning to this day. But the full answer to my friend's question now has a third act caveat.

Early in 2010, I stopped working full time, began a book journal, joined my first-ever book club. A year later I started this blog, a decision accompanied by a commitment to become the best writer I could be in my remaining years. How to do that? Devote all my precious reading hours to the best possible prose. As a consequence, when I give up on a book I've started these days - which I now routinely do, again - it's no longer related to impatience, or its malignant first cousins, immaturity or insecurity. Clunky sentences, cliched metaphors, tired dialogue? Give up. Excessive exposition, unidimensional characters, cliff-hanging chapter endings? Move on. Verbs that don't caress, adjectives that add no value, adverbs run amok? Next. These days, even when a book comes my way via a respected critic or trusted reader, if the writing has nothing to teach me, I'm done. 

How often do you give up on a book you've started?