Jumping Ship

How often do you stop reading books halfway through?

I can count the number of books I've given up reading in my life. I hate to do it, because most of the time I want to know what happens, even if I'm not particularly enjoying the book in the first place.

It's a strange compulsion, I know, but I've always felt this way. When I was in second grade, someone gave me a book called Protecting Marie , about a girl and her dog. I found it dull and could barely get through it, but for whatever reason I insisted on finishing it. Even at that age, I couldn't stand to see it on my bookshelf with the bookmark still sticking up in the middle of it.

Anyway, there's only a handful of books I've started to read and then abandoned in the middle. Most notable of these would be Lord of the Flies by William Golding and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (I had an edition that had all three books bound into one volume and I had intended to read the whole thing together, but I gave up somewhere in the second half of the first book and have no intention of trying again.)

In the last few years there have been more books that I've been tempted to put down and not pick back up. I'm learning finally that there's no use spending time on books that I don't enjoy.