{"id":9328,"date":"2021-10-21T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9328"},"modified":"2021-10-20T15:24:32","modified_gmt":"2021-10-20T19:24:32","slug":"cut-your-losses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9328","title":{"rendered":"Cut Your Losses?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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How much time should you invest in a book that you really, really don\u2019t like? In The Guardian<\/a><\/em> recently, novelist Mark Billingham is quoted as saying, \u201ctwenty pages.\u201d Every time this issue comes up in social media (or Amazon reviews) a few extraordinarily patient people say, \u201cI can\u2019t not<\/em> finish a book. I have to read to the end, no matter what.\u201d If so, you\u2019re in company with almost forty percent of readers, while only about 16 percent give up as early as Billingham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I used to always read to the end, but now . . . life is short. Every year, I read and review (or start to read) 60-plus mysteries and thrillers. I try to give new and unfamiliar authors a chance, if the premise sounds good. Alas, one or two books a year simply are not ready for prime time. If the book came by way of the author and not a publicist, I thank them and say I won\u2019t be able to write a review after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the story is good, even if the execution isn\u2019t quite up to par, I will keep reading. But if a book is boring, I stop. I figure if it can\u2019t hold my interest when I am excited by the premise and predisposed to read and like it, that\u2019s a fail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I encounter numerous typographical and grammar errors in the first few pages, I stop. Because such slip-ups distract readers, authors should care about them. A lot. As people who purportedly care about words, they should know the difference between diffuse and defuse, between pique, peak, and peek. And on and on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days, an occasional typo crops up even in books from big publishing houses, and I speculate that some homonym errors are due to spellcheck\u2019s \u201chelp.\u201d But if it looks as if the author couldn\u2019t be bothered, I can\u2019t help but wonder what else wasn\u2019t attended to. Research? Historical references? Geography? The way guns work? The million little details that distinguish an immersive reading experience from a first draft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I reached the \u201cthrowing the book across the room\u201d stage of frustration recently with an audiobook. (No, I did not<\/em> throw my iPod.) That was a first. Usually, having somebody read to me is pure pleasure. But this book, by a popular author, just didn\u2019t grab me. I didn\u2019t like the whiny main character. I didn\u2019t like the bratty children she was nanny for. And, a teenage daughter was about to enter the story, and I just knew she\u2019d be insufferable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I did something I\u2019ve never done before: I went to the Amazon one-star reviews to see if I was the problem, or did other readers suffer too? Oh, boy. Got an eyeful, including a lot of complaints about the ending. So I did something else I\u2019ve never done before; I found a website where the ending was discussed in detail<\/em>. If, as they say, \u201cgetting there is half the fun,\u201d not only did I not want the journey, but I didn\u2019t want to arrive at that particular ending. Saved myself another ten hours of listening time. What about you? When you don\u2019t like a book, do you stick with it or cut your losses?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How much time should you invest in a book that you really, really don\u2019t like? In The Guardian recently, novelist Mark Billingham is quoted as saying, \u201ctwenty pages.\u201d Every time this issue comes up in social media (or Amazon reviews) … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Cut Your Losses? - At what point do you and that novel you're reading call it quits? Or do you slog to the end?","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[77,40,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-books","category-fiction","category-first-draft-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2qs","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9330,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9328\/revisions\/9330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}