Giving up, moving on...

How long do you give a book? Ten pages? Twenty? Fifty?

I used to be more patient, more forgiving of a book that didn’t engage me quickly. I respected authors who took their time unfolding a narrative. I felt that anyone who had written a novel deserved a long look.

Not so much these days. Partly, it’s my getting older—how many books, realistically, can I read in my remaining years? Partly, it’s a feeling that some writers, some good writers, are just phoning it in. That seems especially true of authors of series who may be pressured to crank out a book a year to satisfy fans or publisher. But I’ve noticed a trend—OK, maybe a trendlet—of well-known, well-regarded authors who’ve written pedestrian novels, work not worthy of them.

In recent months, I’ve plowed through two novels that I expected to love and admire—novels that I found disappointing on so many levels. One is a bloated (almost 500-pages) story tracing the lives of a group of friends through decades. I’d greatly admired the author’s previous novel and looked forward to this one, which was well reviewed. Ten pages in, I thought: “uh-oh.” But I kept going. And going. And going. At the end, the book felt as disappointing as it had felt on page 10. You could feel the machinery grinding, sense the author cranking it out.

Another book, by an even more celebrated author, was hailed as a major event, especially as it was his first novel in decades. I had a different experience with this one. The writing was breathtaking—the kind of prose that makes you stop, re-read a passage, maybe read it aloud, and wonder at the sheer beauty of it. No doubt about it: this is the real thing. But the story? So boring, so shallow. I wanted the main character to be more, to be greater than he was. I kept expecting that he would grow in integrity and wisdom. But no, just more women, more modest fame. At the end, I didn’t care. But I did feel angry with the author for pissing away his prodigious talent on such a slight story.

But maybe my anger is misplaced. Maybe it’s not fair to attack an author who, after all, has written something. Probably, my anger really is targeted at myself for insisting on continuing to read something that just doesn’t work for me. I feel that I’ve wasted my time, and clearly, it was my choice to waste my time. But I kept hoping things would get better—page after page.

How many pages do you give a book before you give up and move on?