Do you feel guilty about putting down a book, halfway through?

[SheilaT]

28. I happened to like "The Girl at the Lion D'Or" very much,

which simply points up how we all have different tastes.

But back to the question of whether or not to finish something. I recently met someone through a writing critique group some of us are starting. That man is quite proud of the fact that he has several non-fiction books and one science fiction novel self published. We had a brief discussion about the merits of doing that, and I simply told him, as I tell everyone, that in my experience most self-published books are not worth reading. I've tried a few in the past, and they've invariably been dreadful.

He (rather graciously, I think) forwarded a copy of it to me via email. I fully intended before I started to read the entire thing, but I got twenty pages into and stopped, because it simply isn't very good. At the very beginning there's clumsy exposition of the As you know, Fred sort. Then there was a villain who was so totally and stupidly evil that I simply couldn't believe it.

Worse yet, the author doesn't really want to do critiquing in this just-starting group, nor, so far as I can tell, put out his stuff to be critiqued either. He just wants to talk about writing generalities. As someone who wants to be published in the old-fashioned way, just sitting around discussing writing abstractly, isn't going to help me. What does help is to have readers point out what I've done wrong, or where I've left them confused, or whatever.

So in any case, whatever the format, whatever you might have paid for a book, other than something you have to read for school or work, don't bother to finish a book that's not working for you. How long you need to give is variable, but time wasted reading something that you don't like, is time you'll never get back, and time that could have been better spent reading something you do like.