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Comment by karaterobot | Hacker News Reader

I have an English Lit degree, and the following advice from a professor almost made it worthwhile: "if you're reading for pleasure, and it's not pleasurable, put the book down. Give the author 50 pages, and if they haven't made it worth your time, move on to the next book."

I share this advice with everybody, but almost nobody takes it as far as I know. There's way too much guilt and shame surrounding reading: "if I pick it up, by GOD I will finish it, even if it takes a year and I hate every second of it". It shouldn't be that way.

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Two of my favorite books - God Emperor of Dune and Anathem - did not hook me until 2-300 pages. I don’t like this advice as it would make me miss these amazing books.

The challenge with the advice is that is I want ok experiences, it works. But if I’m looking for amazing experiences it cuts them off. Lots of art is difficult until the switch that makes it worthwhile. If I followed the advice to only meet my immediate, hedonistic needs to be happy then I wouldn’t have as much overall happiness.

Especially since one great book may be as enjoyable as 100 marginal books.

Of course, it’s also important to try to figure out how to avoid all the other terrible books that just never get better.

> I don’t like this advice as it would make me miss these amazing books.

Abandoning a book does not mean you can never pick it up again. I have abandoned media that I didn’t like only to return to it years later and enjoy it.

> The challenge with the advice is that is I want ok experiences, it works. But if I’m looking for amazing experiences it cuts them off.

That would only be true if all amazing experiences sucked at the start, which is absolutely not true.

> Lots of art is difficult until the switch that makes it worthwhile.

And lots of it is worth it all the way through, or has something that makes you believe it will deliver if you stick with it.

> Especially since one great book may be as enjoyable as 100 marginal books.

And because our time is finite, if we abandon those 100 we may have the opportunity to find 5 great books instead of 1.

Using the word abandon absolutely implies you'll never pick it up again.

> While all these words mean "to give up completely," abandon stresses finality and completeness in giving up.

per https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/abandon

You may be using it hyperbolically, but if you go out of your way to clarify you don't mean it why use the hyperbole in the first place?

The point of this piece is that you should accept never coming back to things removed from your river - Buddhist attachment, etc.

I think my response comes down to having an absolute rule like this is not a good idea.

My practice is to have a set rule about when to continue and when to put away. And I think that’s ok.

I’m all for people having their own heuristics that work for them, but don’t like sharing an easy to follow rule that may be harmful but is followed just because it’s simple and easy.

It seem especially funny that a literature professor would have such a rule as there are so many great books in literature that are difficult and unpleasant while I’m reading them but I’m glad I did.

I’m reminded of a colleague who said something like “every morning a 5am I don’t want to go to the gym and I want to quit the whole time because it’s not fun, but after I finish I never regret having done it.”

Don't you think you're being a little uncharitable to the advice?

The experience between struggling with a complex work that you feel has something to tell you vs. being disappointed by low-quality schlock isn't hard to differentiate. Telling people to 'just power through it no matter what' results in a lot of wasted time, and potentially worse, a diminished joy in reading itself.

I certainly don’t think people should continue on with terrible books or power through everything. If I have schlock I don’t want to give it 50 pages and it may be worth quitting at 5 pages, or 15, or even on the cover.

I’m not sure I’d have very useful advice other than to think about what they read and why and to constantly adjust their to read and am reading list of books.

I think this method works because it exposes you to more books than you'd otherwise get to, increasing the chances you'll find a great one.

Perhaps, but how does it expose me to more books. What is this method compared to?

I don’t think there are only two options- quit after 50 pages or always finish. You certainly shouldn’t always finish, but I don’t think you should always read 50 pages either.

Im more in the camp of “having to rule is better than following this rule.”

> God Emperor of Dune

I feel this way about Dune Messiah, except I didn't appreciate it until after Children of Dune. Dune is one of my favorite books, if not my favorite. Dune Messiah is a *frustrating* read right after Dune. It's not until you see the whole story of the first three books as one narrative arc that it becomes enjoyable.

Took me into middle age to do this.

Now I don't feel guilty about:

- books I don't finish

- movies or tv series I don't finish

- projects I don't make into a company

and it doesn't matter if I bought into it hard. If I bought the "tv series complete collection", or whatever:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect

Hmmm... The first two are for pleasure, whereas the third one is not. Making a company is always going to be hard.

This is good advice. Similarly, if you're reading a book for the information, and you find it's way too wordy, there's no shame in just skimming it.

I used to feel like it was my duty to read every word written by an author if I was serious about reading, even for self-help or pop-psych books. Over time, I realized that there's really a lot of bad writing out there, but there's still good nuggets of info if you look. The trick is to just recognize when a book is just padding itself out and just skim through the boring bits. No shame in that. And honestly, so many self-help or productivity books are just padded out to justify selling a book.

Agree with this. Once a self-help author publishes the second or third book, it’s time to consider what more can they offer. Didn’t their first book solve everything? Or are they just doing it for the money.

“The art of reading is to skip judiciously.”

― Alexander Hamilton

Many people wouldn't get far into the great works of literature with this approach. Many worthwhile books are "difficult pleasures" but the pleasure might not come until after experiencing a lot of pain. Things that are worth doing aren't always fun but you get through the displeasure to become a different person -- one who has access to pleasures you may not have realized you could experience. I didn't like beer when I first tried it. I kept trying it and now I know why beer is beloved by so many.

Many worthwhile books are difficult, true, but many are not. You'll never read all of either group. This advice is saying: don't waste time on books you're not getting anything out of, if it means missing out on books you would get something out of.

Honestly, you could read all the greatest books several times in a life with a habit of reading and a good prioritization. Many great books are pleasurable but many pleasures are acquired. The pleasures of middle age are not the pleasures of youth. The things you might toss aside one year are the things you cherish a decade later. If a reader doesn't get something out of a great book then that's a problem with the reader more than the book.

In general this is good advice, but needs a heuristic of when to apply it. It's a bit like albums: some are hard to get into but worth the effort in the end.

So while there are plenty of books I won't finish, I tend to stick with things if:

a) I've worked my way through a previous book by the author and it was worthwhile b) People whose opinions I trust say it's hard but worthwhile

My spouse and I have a “10 minute” rule for movies or streaming video series. If either of us makes a thumbs down motion in the first 10 minutes we just stop and find something else to watch.

And there’s always something better.

Sunk cost fallacy is playing its part as well I think. I can’t bring myself to read anything I don’t like anymore. I’m a slow reader so working through a book takes its time and I want to get the best possible experience out of it. Won’t happen if I don’t like the book. It’s not only valid for books but everything else: series, movies, video games. If it doesn’t work, why push it?

Some of it also comes from prior impressions that a book is "worth reading". Take Wealth of Nations as an example. It inspired, arguably, the whole field of economics - and yet after a hundred or so pages of reading about the worth of the labour of a man in Glasgow as compared to the labour of a man in London, I just wanted someone to end my misery.

Alas, I'm afflicted by the "must finish" disease, so I paused reading and keep telling myself I'll get back to it.

Same experience with that book; I started listening to the audiobook, but never finished it. Maybe someday.

Do you know how many attempts it took me to finally read Catch 22?

I must've read the first chapter a dozen times. I kept putting it down because it just wasn't holding my interest. Then one day it did and I read it straight through.

One of my favorite books till this day.

BTW, I have no compunction about reading the last few pages of a book first. If it seems like a terrible ending I don't bother. Otherwise, by the time I read it I'll likely have forgotten how it ends. I'd never do this with a movie, but it has yet to spoil a book for me.

This is generally my approach, not just with books but with TV shows and movies as well. Unless there's a compelling reason for me to forge on, I give something a chance and then abort early if it doesn't show a promising yield.

I also take a version of this with informational books. I read until I feel I got what I needed out of the book, and then don't feel pressure to read on if what's left isn't of interest or need.

I've been saying I'm "in the middle of 7 books right now" for almost a year now because I can't let myself admit I'm done reading them :(

I think the biggest difficulty of letting go is that I know if I _wasn't_ so busy I really would like to finish all of them. It's harder to let go when it's external pressures keeping you from finding the time rather than your own motivation/interest

I did this with Snow Crash.

I’m not a literature expert and I know people generally like the book. But I got maybe half way through the book and was wondering, “okay so when is the plot going to advance? Is there even a plot? Just feels like stuff is happening but I’m not sure why I should care.”

I spent too long thinking that it must be a good book so maybe I just have to give it a few more chapters.

That's the thing...

A piece of art can simply not be your thing, but still be "good". That people whose taste you respect think something is great is reason to give it a shot -- but if you're not into it, you're not into it.

That's not wrong at all. It's just differing tastes. It doesn't mean that the work isn't good, nor does it mean that your taste is flawed.

Gravity's Rainbow - I made it three chapters and then donated it to goodwill.

I've made various attempts on 5 different Pynchon books. The only one that I managed to finish was "Inherent Vice"

Snow Crash is way uneven. I believe the first chapter was actually storyboarded, to be a comic book. So it makes an amazing hook, but the rest of the book Needs An Editor.

It reads as almost a picaresque satire, like Candide. It's full of good jokes like "I'm sure he'll listen to Reason" and "the most important technology man has created is the three ring binder", and uses the adventure structure to make commentary about his particular dystopia.

Buuuuut, its also laced with random boring history lessons on ancient mesopotamia. There are just too many locations, characters and digressions to move the plot up coherently and keep in your head, and the flipping between protagonists is hard to follow and remember. Wikipedia's plot summary doesn't even mention several key points, like a nuclear fission powered guard dog nearly going critical. Some the jokes are dated references to the 1980's (Godfather's pizza, Moonies).

There is a good book in there, but wait for the miniseries in 2050.

That’s pretty interesting. Snow crash is the only Stephenson book I liked. The others I disliked because of all the digressions and aimlessness.

So now I wonder if snow crash was really any different or if it was me and the mood I was in.

Snow Crash is my second favorite Stephenson book (The Diamond Age is my favorite). I can see the validity of the literary criticisms of it -- but it still hits a sweet spot for me, and I have enjoyed it just as much every time I've read it again.

I imagine every award Stephenson wins allows him more freedom from editors, and now if you don't enjoy his work, society insists its somehow your fault. You must not be smart enough to enjoy fictional histories of cryptography.

And don't get me wrong, the works of his I've read are set in imaginative worlds, amazing yet somehow just a hyperbolic version of today. It's just that the rejected Wikipedia articles that come along don't much serve the world building or narrative.

It's good advice for multiple reasons. I put books down using this rule for many years. Sometimes I pick it up again and absolutely love it but I'm at a different point in my life and intellectual interests. It's kind of like mushrooms - when I was a kid I hated them, now I want them on everything.

Absolutely. "I must finish everything on my plate" mentality is unnecessary masochism. I recall plowing through ~2/3 of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and then losing interest. I picked up "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" today to be my new bathroom reader.

I tried to read Infinite Jest, and it just pissed me off. It was such an annoying text to try and read. I think I read at most 10 pages.

Likewise, I have “rage quit” reading other books in the past as well.

It’s solid advice. Don’t waste time reading something you are not enjoying. Same goes for movies.

The first time i picked up Infinite Jest it was a drag for 200 pages and I dropped it.

Tried it second time. Went through those terrible 200 first pages... and suddenly I was on the 900th wishing hard it wasn't about to end. One of favourite books to this day.

I'm general, this is an online problem: how long do you want to persevere on any given book if it's not immediately gratifying? I often take into consideration whether I enjoyed other author's works and friends suggestions.

I think it's not so good advice. I have read many books which took me many, many attempts to get to the point of no return to love them and finish them, most of those books are now my favorites. The consumerist approach of giving 50 pages would be better suited for red flags, for example, if it's a theme you don't like, or maybe, just maybe, something against your personal beliefs and values. Life is too short to not give a chance to literature masterpieces.

I think good advice is something along the lines of: "Find a good book discussion group" (for me this is /r/Fantasy). "Then, if you aren't liking a book somewhat significantly into it, explain to people there why you don't like it and should you keep reading it."

This method is pretty effective in a good discussion group because if you have explained your reasons well, people will understand your reasons for dislike and know whether things change; the payoff is worth it; the author improves; etc.

One example is The Licanius Trilogy. A lot of people say, "I read book 1, I hate it, should I finish it" and depending on how much they hated book 1 and their reading speed people will give differing advice. For example if you can finish the trilogy in 5 days (this is about how fast I read it) I would say yes, the ending is fantastic but the books are pretty dreadful in terms of prose quality and character depth. However if this will take you 6 months, no, bail out now and spend your time better. Read a plot summary on Wikipedia.

Reading is very much a social activity and much better when treated as such imo.

Whatever heuristic you want to use is fine, the key thing is that if it fails your test, you have to be willing to put it down and move on to the next book. Don't get caught up on 50 pages, it's an arbitrary number.

I wonder where this guilt comes from. It seems highly illogical, yet very common. I've had to learn to ignore it with books and video games.

For me, it's somewhat about thinking "I am not good at finishing things". I want to be someone who "gets things done", when I should actually strive to be someone who "quickly lets go of what is not worth spending time on".

Yes. Not everything is worth finishing. Trying something out and dropping it if it doesn't work is just as important to be able to do as being able to finish things.

We have a finite amount of time on this earth, and we can't do everything. If we never "test out" stuff and drop it if it's not for us, we'll be unable to discover a lot of things that are excellent uses of our limited time.

Perhaps because people are forced to read books in school. It's a habit formed in childhood.

I don't agree with this. Many times, I struggled with a book but "forced" myself to finish it, to find it beneficial in the end and resulting in a substantial change in my views.

I made it through eight books of Wheel of Time before I finally stopped reading the series.

... I don't know how I made it to #8.

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