
I enjoy meeting up with the people in these book clubs. But, one of the down sides is that I have been reading books I am not particularly interested in. I specially remember one of them. It was like a burden to open the book, the descriptions were killing me, I was bored to my bones by the story yet, there I was reading my standard 25 pages a day.
I kept saying to myself that there were too many books that I really wanted to read to waste my time with this one. But, the fact was I could not give up on the story. I realised I had a compulsive need of finishing reading a novel even if I hated it. It’s like an addiction and I call it being a maniac reader, an extremely obsessive enthusiast about reading.
Now, I can deal with that. I’ve been reading books I disliked and I always finished them. But the problem with that specific one was that it had 562 big pages; it was never ending; it took me forever to finish it. I felt I was wasting my time and not getting anything in return.
I have reflected on why I just can’t discard a book and I came up with five reasons.
1- I have too much admiration and respect for authors to stop reading their book. I mean, I can see the effort and the time they have put in writing their novel and I feel as if I’m being nasty to close the book and not reading the last words of the story.
2- Curiosity killed the cat and even if I am not enjoying whatever is happening in the book, I still want to know how the story ends.
3- I love words and how magical and powerful they are. If I stop reading a book before the end of a story, I feel like I’m giving up on these words.
4- Even if I don’t enjoy the story, I always learn something such as how to write certain scenes, describe characters and, as a writer, I feel this is priceless.
5- If the book I’m reading is for one of my book clubs, I feel I must “finish my homework” and read the whole story.
To be honest, I’m questioning how good some of these reasons are (think reason 2 and 5). Perhaps the real reason is if one day I’ll end up seeing my books published, I would love that people give me a chance and read my stories until the last page…
Do you always finish a book even if you don’t like it?
How many pages of a book will you read before giving up?
Do you read only genres you like or do you try to read different types of novels?
Rita is a writer and blogger. She's French Canadian with a Lebanese background now living in Melbourne. She speaks French and Arabic and is now learning Italian. She's a former Canadian lawyer who also completed a Post Graduate Diploma in Journalism at RMIT University. Now that she has reconnected with her love for creative writing, she is working on a fantasy series and thinks that this is one of the most amazing but also challenging things she has ever done.
Rita blogs at The Crafty Expat: http://thecraftyexpat.com