Why readers leave books unfinished

Nancy Pearl’s Rule of 50: Read till Page 50 and continue only if you enjoyed it thus far. (Photo by Kate Graur via Pexels)

A half-read book, said David Mitchell, is a half-finished love affair. That sentiment certainly brings out the emotional connection that a reader can forge with a book. It also gestures at a sense of commitment, an encouragement to stick with a companion through thick and thin.

The metaphor, however, oversimplifies things. Can you compare the complexity and nuances of a relationship with the experience of reading a book? There’s also a hint of the judgmental in Mitchell’s statement: it’s as though the reader is being subtly accused of unfaithfulness if the book is left unfinished.

This fear of failure often leads people to force their way through books they don’t enjoy. They clench their teeth and turn the pages, sometimes skimming to make the process more bearable, until they reach the last word and firmly toss the volume aside. This is a pity because there are valid reasons for abandoning a book.

Before that happens, though, the book should be given a fair chance. American librarian and critic Nancy Pearl’s Rule of 50 has sometimes been used as a yardstick, as I’ve mentioned before. Read 50 pages, she says, and then ask yourself if you’re really liking the book. If not, put it down and look for another. Because life is short, Pearl adds a twist. If you’re 51 or older, she suggests, subtract your age from 100: the resulting number is how many pages you should read before you can guiltlessly give up. “The ultimate privilege of age,” she concludes, “is that when you turn 100, you are authorised to judge a book by its cover”.

Pearl also wisely points out that there’s nothing to stop you from returning to a book, be it days or years later. “There is many a book that I couldn’t get into the first time, or even two, that I tried to read it, and then, giving it one more chance, totally fell under its spell,” she writes. “The book obviously hadn't changed — but I had.” To take two examples at random, many readers who abandon George Eliot’s Middlemarch or Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain feel quite differently when they go back to them after ages.

There can be no universal reason to abandon a book, of course. One person’s page-turner is another’s snoozefest. It depends on preferences, reasons for reading, and sometimes, the book’s length itself. Even if a book is a bestseller, or lauded by enthusiastic critics and friends, there’s no guarantee or obligation to like it.

A lack of engagement is the most common reason for leaving a book unfinished. Such engagement comes in various flavours: the writing style may be boring, the plot may be slow or predictable, or the subject matter may not strike a chord. The book may be too complex or challenging for current needs, with dense language and an intricate premise. (Ulysses, anyone?)

Often, there are mismatched expectations. You pick up a book expecting something different from what it actually is, leading to disappointment. That non-fiction opus promising to reveal hidden insights turns out to be another defence of Western values. That thrilling medieval mystery is a lukewarm rehash of all the other mysteries you’ve already read.

With fiction, many also leave books halfway because they don’t find the characters relatable. This is a feeble argument. Unfamiliar attitudes offer fresh insights that challenge biases. Understanding different viewpoints can be a valuable reason to read, even if it doesn’t necessarily lead to increased empathy, as many have claimed.

Characters and plot apart, the setting and especially the prose style can certainly make reading a book worthwhile. There’s a rare pleasure in coming across a striking simile, for example. Consider this, by Lawrence Durrell, describing a scene from his beloved Alexandria: “The great limousines soared away from the Bourse with softly crying horns, like polished flights of special geese.”

If that and more leave you unimpressed, setting a book aside needn’t be seen as a waste of time. It can be a form of dialectical engagement, a pushback against something that doesn’t resonate, leading to the discovery of what does. As for Mitchell’s analogy of reading a book being like a love affair: sometimes, a measure of success isn’t the destination but the journey, even if it ends before the final chapter.