1drneutron
There are just those times when the book you're reading isn't doing it for you. But some of us have trouble putting it down and moving on.
For those times, Nancy Pearl suggested her Rule of 50:
If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit. Since that number gets smaller and smaller as we get older and older, our big reward is that when we turn 100, we can judge a book by its cover!
You don't have to agree with the specifics, but don't be afraid to set that book aside and move on to something better.
And then talk about it here!
This is our space to chat about the book failures in our lives. Tell us why you didn't like the book everyone else seems to love. Tell us why you didn't finish the novel that looked so promising at first. Tell us why you couldn't stand the writing. Or the plot. Or the characters.
And get some (metaphorical) tea and sympathy if that's what you need.
Fire away!
For those times, Nancy Pearl suggested her Rule of 50:
If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit. Since that number gets smaller and smaller as we get older and older, our big reward is that when we turn 100, we can judge a book by its cover!
You don't have to agree with the specifics, but don't be afraid to set that book aside and move on to something better.
And then talk about it here!
This is our space to chat about the book failures in our lives. Tell us why you didn't like the book everyone else seems to love. Tell us why you didn't finish the novel that looked so promising at first. Tell us why you couldn't stand the writing. Or the plot. Or the characters.
And get some (metaphorical) tea and sympathy if that's what you need.
Fire away!
2fuzzi
Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie S. Tolan
I Pearl Ruled this book at page 60. I don't like any of the characters, and even eccentric characters should be somewhat likable. The Penderwick and Blossoms (Betsy Byars) series have likable, 3 dimensional eccentric characters, so it can be done well. It wasn't here.
What really amazes me is this book won a Newbery. I don't see how.
3ritacate
I love this! I'm on the farther end of 50s and it was probably at about 52 that I decided with less than 50 years left I don't need to waste any precious minute on a stupid book. I still finish a few where I don't care at all about the characters, but am still curious about how the story is resolved.
4ArlieS
My first pearl rule of the year: Children of time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
This science fiction novel has 3 more or less separate threads, and bounces between them for at least the first 200 pages. I liked only one of those threads; the others were too dark for me. I also dislike the technique of jumping from thread to thread, just when the one I'd been reading gets especially interesting, and tend to put the book down on a thread switch.
I started this on January 25. I was only 213 pages in, of 629, by Feb 29. It's due back at the library on March 8, having run out of renewals. It's time to call it quits, even though the various groups from its three threads are finally meeting. The thread I liked has developed its own dark content now, making it even less attractive to me, even though they seem to have averted their impending doom, at least for the immediate present.
It's time to give up on this book, and not bother reclaiming it from the library at some future time, let alone reading its two sequels.
This science fiction novel has 3 more or less separate threads, and bounces between them for at least the first 200 pages. I liked only one of those threads; the others were too dark for me. I also dislike the technique of jumping from thread to thread, just when the one I'd been reading gets especially interesting, and tend to put the book down on a thread switch.
I started this on January 25. I was only 213 pages in, of 629, by Feb 29. It's due back at the library on March 8, having run out of renewals. It's time to call it quits, even though the various groups from its three threads are finally meeting. The thread I liked has developed its own dark content now, making it even less attractive to me, even though they seem to have averted their impending doom, at least for the immediate present.
It's time to give up on this book, and not bother reclaiming it from the library at some future time, let alone reading its two sequels.
5ArlieS
My second pearl rule of the year: American midnight : the Great War, a violent peace, and democracy's forgotten crisis by Adam Hochschild
This is a book about repression in the United States, during and after World War One (then known as the "Great War"). I was learning a lot of very ugly specifics, though the picture painted is pretty close to what my left-leaning Canadian parents seemed to expect from patriotic Americans and their government(s) as of the early 1960s. (The biggest difference perhaps is that the violence shown in this book had a broader range of targets than my parents might have expected.)
It's also a book about resistance to that repression, but at least in the early part it's very much a doomed resistance: look what so-and-so did before they stuck him/her in jail, or sometimes murdered him/her.
The level of ugly behaviour depicted was too much for me, particularly when it's depicted as more or less official policy, not the excesses of a few aberrant individuals. Reading the book was upsetting me a lot more than I cared to deal with.
This is a book about repression in the United States, during and after World War One (then known as the "Great War"). I was learning a lot of very ugly specifics, though the picture painted is pretty close to what my left-leaning Canadian parents seemed to expect from patriotic Americans and their government(s) as of the early 1960s. (The biggest difference perhaps is that the violence shown in this book had a broader range of targets than my parents might have expected.)
It's also a book about resistance to that repression, but at least in the early part it's very much a doomed resistance: look what so-and-so did before they stuck him/her in jail, or sometimes murdered him/her.
The level of ugly behaviour depicted was too much for me, particularly when it's depicted as more or less official policy, not the excesses of a few aberrant individuals. Reading the book was upsetting me a lot more than I cared to deal with.
6alcottacre
My first Pearl ruled book is one that is especially disappointing for me to give up on, but life is too dadgum short. I loved Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close but at the 50-page point of Here I Am, I decided enough was enough. I was not about to have to go through 500+ pages. I was really looking forward to the book - and it was a shared read with Kim, to boot. *sigh*
7m.belljackson
Pearled Pianos and Flowers after first chapter overflowed with Death and Depression.
Great book title and wonderful photograph premise unfortunately unwound...
Great book title and wonderful photograph premise unfortunately unwound...
