Pro tip: never feel guilty about leaving a book unfinished. If it's taking too long to read, pick up the next thing on your list.

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Arubis 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My favorite rubric for this is: give yourself permission to put the book down and never pick it up again at page (100 - your current age). Which means that, yes, once your turn 100, you're allowed to judge a book by its cover.

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QuantumNomad_ an hour ago | parent | next [-]

One of the books I most strongly remember giving up on was “Infinite Jest”. I only got through a few pages and trying to read it just made me really angry. I don’t remember why exactly, but I remember very strongly that it was so unpleasant and annoying for me that I absolutely did not want to read any further. Regardless of how important this book may be according to some. I have no intention of ever picking that book up again. I might miss out on something, but I’m fine with that. There are plenty of other books to read.

	▲	jcalx an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Read [0] and wonder no longer — with the very important caveat that I too have not read Infinite Jest, so I cannot vouch for its accuracy. (I plan on reading it someday, and this has made me more interested in doing so.) [0] https://mattlakeman.org/2026/03/26/infinite-jest-extraction/

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mohamedkoubaa 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Brilliant

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teh_klev 35 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't mind taking a long time to complete a book if the story is good. I just re-read a couple of Peter F Hamilton 1200 page tomes that took me over a month to complete (Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained). However they were fun and I was immersed in the world building.

There are other far shorter novels I have abandoned after 70-80 pages because they're just not very good.