Why do we Abandon Reading Certain Books?
There are many books we all intend on reading someday and even go out
of our way to buy, in the hopes we might read them.
Sometimes they are a
classic like Catch 22, War and Peace or The Republic. In other cases its
published recently and we hear about it in the media, such as 50 Shades
of Grey, The Casual Vacancy or the Goldfinch.
What makes us abandon
books after a few pages or never quite get into it?
Social Media website GoodReads recently published a piece on the
psychology of abandonment. Their research found that Catch-22, Lord of
the Rings, Ulysses, Moby-Dick, and Atlas Shrugged were the top abandoned
books.
The top five most abandoned contemporary books included J. K.
Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy, Fifty Shades of Grey, and Eat Pray Love.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Wicked” were also frequently
discarded.
Why do we abandon books after a few pages or get back to them years
later?
Does the average person really read everything a specific author
writes, or just stay locked into their favorite genres?
A number of
people weighed in on the subject:
“I adore the Harry Potter books, but I’m not the kind who would read
everything written by a favourite author and in the case of Rowling, I
refuse to read her other novels (excluding the three Harry Potter
companion books), The Casual Vacancy and The Cuckoo’s Calling.”
Another user weighed in and mentioned “I read for pleasure and to
escape the real world, and not to better myself. I’d become a better
person by reading those serious tomes, I know, but since I haven’t read
them, I’m not a better person, and thus won’t read them.” :)
Xanthe contributed his thoughts “There are a lot of books that I
can’t finish, mainly books with :
- heroines who are too stupid to live (or
too annoying to be around) or
- heroes who are totally scarred by the
deaths of their partners for which they blame themselves.
- books about
middle-aged women whose husbands have divorced them unexpectedly and
now find love with a younger man.
- poor Irish maidservants at the turn
of the 20th century who become matriarchs of a dysfunctional clan.
- mysteries in which whodunit is telegraphed by easy process of
elimination.
- books in which a whole chapter is devoted to a sex scene
for no plot-driven purpose (I’m looking at you, Laurell K. Hamilton).
- “important” books that are supposed to make me reflect upon the human
condition by portraying lives of people that I wouldn’t like if I knew
them in real life.
- books that are so excessively footnoted to the
point that the author has managed to destroy any interest that I might
have had in the topic because the rhythm of the books is constantly
broken up by them.”
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