Just how much will you take when reading a book.  How long will you continue to read even if you’re not enjoying it when will you eventually just flip and say ‘why don’t you smegging well smeg off, you annoying little smeggy smegging smegger??’

Basically, will you stay the course, even if you’re not enjoying the book??  I admit that I’ve reached a point where I think life is just too short and books far too plentiful to read the ones that just aren’t doing it for me.  But, every now and again I will be grimly determined to finish a book even though I’m not enjoying it – this is usually because the general feeling ‘out there’ is it’s a must read book so I continue to the bitter end because I keep think something will suddenly change and a light bulb will go on for me.

One of the problems with DNFs is if they’re review books – I won’t write a review for a book I’ve not finished.  That’s just a personal whim of mine and not something I sit in judgement over others on.  Plus, I make it fairly clear on my ‘about me’ that if I don’t finish I don’t review.  Simples.  Yet, I do appreciate knowing when others didn’t finish a book and understanding why that was the case!

Here’s the conundrum – if you don’t review the books that you don’t finish then your blog seems to be full of glowing reviews of books you love.  This is a good thing in itself but does also have the tendency to make you look like a pushover or as though you’re just prepared to enjoy everything that’s put in front of you – which in turn makes you look a little undiscerning! This makes me feel like I should press on and finish all the books I start so that I can review them – which in turn will lead to negative reviews, which I really hate doing!!  Catch 22.

So, when is enough enough?  Do you read on to the end or not?

In honesty, I’ve just read a book that clearly wasn’t for me and yet I pursued it to the end!  But, in doing so, it took me a lot longer than it normally would to finish the book as I kept putting it down and I didn’t really have any enthusiasm to pick it back up again!  Not only did I not really enjoy the reading of the book but I also won’t enjoy writing the review – why, oh why, did I do this to myself!!  Well, I think I was trying to prove something to myself really.  I haven’t quite put my finger on what that was yet.  And, was the exercise successful?  Well, that depends on how I measure success.  It certainly confirmed for me that I won’t be reading to the end in future if the book isn’t grabbing me.  And, yes, we can’t all like all the same books all the time.  Something about being human…

So, when is the cake all gone for you?  Do you read everything you pick up even if you’re not loving it??  I personally feel like I’ve lost so much time when I read a book that I didn’t enjoy.

Thoughts welcome please.