Booking Through Thursday: Half

This week's BTT topic is a familiar one, but always an interesting one: What do you do if, halfway through a book, you find it's not really grabbing you?

It’s boring. It’s trite. It’s badly written . . . . What do you do? Read the second half? Just to finish out the story? Find out what happens? Or, cut your losses and dump the second half?

This set of questions is particularly timely for me because I just finished reading a book that I felt just this way about (sad to say it was Brunonia Barry's latest, The Map of True Places – my review will be posted sometime today or tomorrow). And in that case, I kept reading because the book was an advance copy and I felt obligated to finish and review it.

And I suppose that's my answer: If there's some overwhelming reason to finish a book I'm not enjoying, then I'll keep plugging away at it – if I've agreed to review it, or it's a book club or group-read book. Or if it was recommended by a close friend. Otherwise, I have no qualms about giving up on a read halfway through.

These days, I read mostly for pleasure, so I figure if the book isn't giving me pleasure, why struggle through it? Life, as they say, is too short to spend any precious reading time on bad books. Ditch the stinker and pull another book off that ridiculously enormous TBR pile!