March 09, 2016 
Miriam 
For most of my life as a reader, I read every book I started to the end. Not finishing a book was sacrilege. No matter how tedious the narrative (I’m looking at you, James Fenimore Cooper), how irritating the storytelling (Hi, Dan Brown), or how purple the writing (Ugh, take a bow, Robert James Waller), I would slog through the whole thing figuring that even if I hated the book I would have learned a valuable lesson about bad choices and the authors who make them.
Then, I became a grown-up. With a job that requires a lot of homework, a husband I like to talk to, a kid with more activities on his calendar than Babe Paley in her heyday, and friends I’d ideally like to see in person rather than just on Facebook, reading for pleasure has become a, well, guilty pleasure. My once holier-than-thou attitude about finishing what you start has now morphed into if I’m not intrigued by the second page and in love by the fiftieth, the book is going back on the shelf to collect dust and await discovery by a more committed reader or eventual relocation—so I don’t feel guilty every time I look at it.
There are exceptions, of course. You all know I read every last annoying word of The Goldfinch even though I disagreed with all those who thought it was brilliant. Occasionally, I do force myself to keep reading, because there are glimmers in those first 50 pages that the story will unfold to reveal something exceptional. Mostly, though, my pleasure reading follows the pattern of my work reading. If you can’t capture my attention very early on, the crush of other manuscripts waiting in the wings will make the decision for me.
A propos of all of this, today, on Galleycat, I saw a piece about how women are more apt to stay with a book they don’t like than men. And, from my experience, I find that to be true. The women in my book club, for instance, will routinely report that they have read an entire book they felt lukewarm about at best or hated outright at worst. My husband and other male friends, on the other hand, will leave a trail of half-read volumes in their wake with not even a discernible glimmer of guilt or regret.
What does that say about women and men as readers? And does it mean that my reading process has become more, er, masculine as I’ve gotten older? Do you guys finish everything you start? And, if not, at what point do you throw your hands up, toss the book aside, and go in search of the remote?
Some of this is a growing process, (which is a nice of saying that as you get older you don’t like the idea of being shoveled into your grave with a bad fan-fiction knockoff of Bridges Of Madison County in your cold annoyed fingers) and also the realization that not everything that was cool back in the day stays that way. Stephen King has mused about being forced to cut about 40% of the original storyline of THE STAND because his publishers thought it was just too much of a bridge support, (I’ve got both the 1980 paperback version and the director’s cut from years later) and next time I make myself reread it, I’ll probably do the short version even if it works my nerves by claiming you can set off a nuclear device by accidentally dropping it. Stephen R. Donaldson burned me out forever on humorless epic fantasy around the same time period, but I read every one of his Thomas Covenant series…Once. These days I don’t think I’d get through it, and the only reason I still keep them around is to remind myself why it was a good idea to stop smoking dope. That’s enough inspirational reminiscences for earnest young writers for today, I think…
Perhaps I\’m more feminine than most, but I\’ve never put down a book, and generally slog through every miserable page before moving on to the next. The lone exception is King\’s THE TALISMAN, which I put down a few years ago to start a reading challenge, but I do still intend (perhaps vainly) to finish. I do find I\’m just reading less in general as an adult, but I also attribute that at least partially to the advent of Netflix and the internet. Reading seemed like about 40-50% of my options of shit to do when bored in the \’90s, and now it seems more like 5-10%.
Ha! I read this sentence: women are more apt to stay with a book they don’t like than men.
As: Women are more apt to stay with men they don’t like
Seriously, though, I’m with you. It was when I decided to do a dedicated reading program (instead of a master’s degree) that I put the fifty pages rule into effect. Since then, I’ve gotten much more ruthless…two pages is often two too many and I’m outta there. The thing is, I might miss out on some really good stuff, but why take a chance when there’s Liane Moriarty to read? Or someone equally as good.
If I’m not sure about a book, I set it down for 24 hours. If I don’t feel the urge to pick it up during that time, back to the library it goes. I rarely pick one up I’ve set down that way though.
Last year, I read a book that I thought was pretty good, but I wasn’t going to tell everyone I knew to read it…until I got to the end and there was this amazing payoff that I never saw coming in a million years. It did give me pause and make me wonder how many other books I have set down that might’ve been worth reading, but in the end, I’m comfortable with quitting at any time, whether it’s 1 page in, or 250.
Mmmmmmm… I have a different hypothesis.
I don’t believe putting down books is an gendered trait based on the observation that men drop books they don’t like sooner or in greater numbers.
My theory is there is simply more books that men don’t like than women don’t like. In other words, the results are skewed out of the gate.
I believe if there were more books that appealed to men, the numbers of tossing the books aside would shrink.
The original article in Digital Book world lends some evidence to my thinking.
While I do believe there are masculine and feminine differences in the actual act of reading, this factoid is skewed by the appeal of the actual objects in question (books).
And what does it say about me, a man, who tends to stick with books to the end? There have been a fair number of times when I’ve found a book to be dreadful in one or more areas and still wanted to finish it, because I wanted to know what happens. I’m never sure if that means it’s a good book or not!
You guys all make good points. Maybe it has nothing to do with gender, per se, just a greater capacity for feeling guilty about stopping and that may be more ingrained in women than in men, but it’s not exclusive to either sex.
I don\’t think it means it\’s a \”good book\” — I think it means the author has a knack for creating a page-turner, even if each page is filled with the most unbelievable mishmash of absurd characters and events.Case in point: \”The Horse Whisperer\”. What a piece of tripe! Absolutely the most ridiculous, unrealistic, implausible waste of paper I\’ve ever encountered. BUT — I couldn\’t put it down.Maybe that was because I wanted to know just how bad it would be (as was the case with \”Scarlett\”, which I really regret completing). In any case, the writer had skill, even if he apparently knows nothing about plots or people.
Sorry, this comment was meant to be a reply to jeffo.
I would like to know whether the study took age into account. I would posit that younger women are most likely to toss away a bad book than, say, women over 50. As Miriam points out, some women (esp. the Boomers and their moms) have a guilt complex that they are not doing “what they should”. Clean your room. Write the thank you note. Finish your vegetables. Finish the book.
In contrast, most men don’t give a hoot about that stuff.