I tried searching old posts and didn't find anything fitting my specific query so wanted to get people's opinions. I'm on a lifelong quest to read the classics. I've got a "bucket list" of 100, and it's not a competition, the list is meant to be a lifelong journey, and I've quite enjoyed tackling the classics and gotten a lot of joy out of them.
That being said, I'll be he honest, even my favorite classics were a slog at some points, especially since the pace and language are often very different from today's books/media. Even if I haven't always enjoyed the book, I can sometimes still appreciate the historical context and what the author was trying to say. For example, I recently finished The Sun Also Rises and found the characters miserable and the story mid. However, I can appreciate Hemingway's writing style and what he was trying to say about The Silent Generation and their PTSD and numbing their pain in various ways because there wasn't mental health help back then.
So all of this is a long winded way to say, when you're reading a classic, which admittedly can sometimes be work/a chore, at what point do you decide you dislike it so much that it's not worth reading? The classic I'm reading right now (I'm not going to name it because I don't want people coming after me with pitchforks lol) is just really not my cup of tea. I haven't yet read a classic that I hate as much as this one, and it's a ~450 page book so I'm really trying to debate if it's worth finishing it for the sake of crossing it off my bucket list, or if I should just call it and replace it on my list with a different book instead. What are your guys' methods?
by smansaxx3
19 Comments
I gave Pride and Prejudice 100 pages which is 99 more than it deserved. Awful, shallow trash.
You’re reading for pleasure. Feel free to exercise your judgment. I’ve given up on books on page three or even 20-30 pages from the end.
I don’t ever force myself to read a book I don’t like (life’s too short and there are too many books I want to read) but I do usually give classics a little more time before I give up on them, only because I think it sometimes takes a minute to adjust to the language or way of writing, especially depending on how old it is.
However, if I’ve given it several chapters and I’m still not into it, I have no issue just acknowledging it’s not for me and setting it aside. I read for pleasure, so I’m not trying to prove anything by forcing myself to finish something I find unpleasant.
If it’s a slog, I don’t read it. If I’m not having fun, I don’t read it.
I say this as someone who enjoys classics! I read a lot of them. But life is too short to read things you don’t like just because you think you “should.”
If I’m reading for pleasure, I give up on a book when I realize I am no longer looking forward to my next reading session with that book.
I ended up reading Dracula over the course of most of a year due to Dracula Daily. So that’s probably an outlier.
Even my least favorite classics were enjoyable enough in some way to finish. I’ve never read one that I ended up regretting spending the time on.
After Moby Dick, not very long.
I’m glad you posted this; I had a similar question about Great Expectations.
I drop books when I feel that I no longer want to be reading them, “classics” or otherwise. I know the feeling when it arises. This could be 50 pages in or 500 pages in. This tends to be maybe 1 in 20-25 books for me, but it still happens nevertheless.
Count of monte Cristo was that for me. I read it when I was in school for a book report. Forced myself to finish that miserable book and have heard people rave about how wonderful it is for the last 25 years. I should have just stopped reading it and picked it up later but I’m now don’t want to go back and try again.
For me it’s not only enjoyment, it’s also feeling that a book is challenging me, challenging my views, opening some new horizons or just making my brain work harder. If it’s not doing any of those things then it’s straight to the DNF pile.
Is this the same list of 100 that the Equalizer was reading? And if so, where I can find this list?
25% is all it’s getting. If I don’t find a single reason in that amount of pages, then it’s time to call it quits.
A lot depends on your actual goal.
If you truly just want to cross one off on your bucket list, I would think first targeting the least challenging titles on your list would make sense.
After all, no matter your age or reading speed your time is limited.
Just as cinephiles almost always have major omissions in what they have seen, readers can’t legitimately hope to read everything of value in a single lifetime.
Athletes know that grueling exercise is sometimes worth it and other times pointless self-torture. Nobody can really make the decision for you when the balance has shifted too far one way or another.
One thing that can help is communicating regularly with readers who share your appreciation level about which specific books they found worthwhile (or not). No two readers will *always* agree, but if there is a broad consensus and you begin reading and have the same impression the odds are if most readers agree that a book continues on in the same way for the remainder of its length they are probably correct.
tl;dr Don’t worry about developing a general rule, try not to get pointlessly bogged down.
I struggle to read a lot of classics but find I devour them as audiobooks
For me it depends on the length of the book / what genre it falls into. I like to give all books a little time even if I don’t like them in the beginning (because who knows I might find them interesting later on) so I generally drop anywhere from 25-100 pages in depending on how long the book is. If it’s a genre I typically enjoy, I drop later because I tend to get to the point where I don’t feel like spending anymore time reading it later. Basically, it’s just about how I feel when reading the book because while I don’t drop it right when I’m not enjoying it, I drop it when I feel like I will not enjoy it if I read anymore.
I tend to have 2 or 3 books going at once. A nonfiction, a classic, and a contemporary fiction for fun. That way, if I’m having a hard time concentrating on one of them, I switch. But in answer to your actual question, I have given up after a few chapters if I find myself getting anxious at the thought of reading it. Maybe set it aside and try again next year. It will still be there.
I usually go until the end as a matter of principle (although as I age time becomes more precious and I’m being less strict about this).
I gave up on Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain midway though. It hadn’t been interesting to me up to that point, and I didn’t see that changing for the second half of the book (and it’s a thick book!), so besides the fact that I was bored, I didn’t really see the point, I wasn’t going to get anything from that book. Maybe I was wrong who knows?