So, one of the things I want to do on my blog is address a few issues. This is one that comes up a lot on goodreads, but only on the books I've panned (maybe because on the books I've loved and then entered into discussion on, I actually don't want to be ignorant) and it really annoys me.
People seem to think that it's a waste of time to finish a book you don't enjoy at the beginning. I just can't even begin to articulate how much I find that rude, and ignorant, and just plain disrespectful. There are plenty of reasons to finish a book you do not enjoy at first:
-Because the label bookworm is fairly accurate. Reading is a weird form of addiction whereby once you've invested in reading a book, you have to know how it ends. Maybe the beginning misconstrues the blurb and you read on to find the storyline that caught your eye in the first place. Maybe there are nuances you did not enjoy but there is enough, just, to keep you reading on.
-Because if you do want to discuss books with someone, it's a good idea to know what you're discussing. Maybe you're discussing character development, or plot twists, or characterisation, or use of langauge. This is what I mean by nuances, you can think someone writes beautifully but has nothing to say, and someone else has a magnificent story but no way of communicating it properly.
-The beginning can be misleading. Some authors spend a lot of time on exposition, so that you get about halfway through the book before you get to the storyline. Others have the storyline at the beginning (the biggest crime of most ebooks in my kindle) and you need to read the rest to know how the book will alter and grow. Why is the blurb only focused on the start, or the end of the story? What of books that only contain review comments on the blurb page?
-Something I do, and I'm not the only one, is to take a guess from the first few pages about how things will transpire. Like, right now I'm reading A Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and he's waxing lyrical about how rude Pearl is, and I'm playing guess the husband (the stranger Hester reacted to, check one!) and the lover (the priest who doesn't interact with anyone for 90% of his life, but when he does everyone loses it over how wise it is. I haven't got there yet, so can't check that one) and the outcome for Pearl (she's either going to be loved by everyone and everyone'll be like "I can't believe she was a bastard" or else she's going to die. I can't call it yet) and whether Hester will lose her A (At the end?). My point is, even though I read, I think at the same time, so you could write "Cathy went to the shop" and my brain will be going "Cathy's married to Mark isn't she, but she's not happy in her relationship so maybe some drama's going to go down at the shop" at the same time as going "is this the local shop or the one out of the way so Mark can't see?" and also "What shop? Are we brand-naming or coasting over that. Is it going to be relevant?" - I can't just put down a book, I need to know I'm right. I'm like, 95% right all the time (and extremely narcisstic, apparently), how can I just walk away from a book and not finish it?
Actually, I walked away from three books, and they're stuck in my mind, so you know there's something major still going on. The first was Great Expectations, which I read in school at 15. We also started watching the DVD in class, so we'd alternate between the two. I stopped reading when the DVD went past where I'd read to, and Pip lost all his cash (so about 3/4 of the way through, I guess) - all my questions were answered before I got there. I hate reading the book after watching the film. I did watch the recent Douglas Booth version on BBC and loved it, but it's not the same. The second book was The Post-Birthday Party by Lionel Shriver. I love Shriver, We Need To Talk About Kevin is my favourite book ever and she participated in a TV experiment on the effects of MDMA to see if it should be legalised and was just ... I wish I was her. I left the Post-Birthday Party because another book from a series I'd been following came out, and I just never went back. It's on my to-read list, along with about 60 other books. The third and final one, was Gerald's Game by Stephen King. My inner monologue killed the story ("So she's been tied up for about four hours now because night is only just falling and I'm a third of the way through the book yet she's dying of dehydration and her husband that she accidentally killed three hours and fifty minutes ago is already rotting on the floor and somehow a mongrel has smelt the three-hour-old rotting flesh and somehow come into the house and is easily tearing his flesh from the body? This isn't scary, this is stupid, King has no idea about timelines and I hate him." - Gerald's Game is apparently King's weaker novel, but screw it, I won't be reading any more. I know, I know, controversy!) and it's the only book I have never craved to get to the end to. I couldn't even crave the end of the stupid chapter, because it was so monotonous and illogical. I like being logical.
Basically, I think it's an invalid argument, I read a lot of different genres, for different age groups, and my favourite book is about a woman who makes a bet with her husband about having a child who then turns into a mass-murderer. There's no one likeable in it, and the storyline is intense and has a lot of situation-building in the start, but it's loveable. I like other books that no one else seems to, like Lauren Kate's Fallen series. I also like some books in one genre and not others (like, I couldn't get on with Hush Hush, which is basically Fallen. Other people feel the opposite) but if you don't read, and don't stick with a book, how will you know? Tell me I'm not the only one to think like this?
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