Life’s too short for bad books

Self Indulgence 1 Minute

I should start of by noting that the title of this post is a little unfair. The books in question are not necessarily bad, just not for me. And no, I’m not going to name any of them.

The thing is, I can be quite a terrible acquirer of freebies. In the case of ebooks, this means public domain classics from the likes of Project Gutenberg (which tend to be well worth reading) and promotions from the free eBook section of the Kobo store (which often aren’t).

As such, I have managed to create a rather silly situation for myself in which I am not reading the books I want to read because I feel somewhat obliged the get through at least some of the free-but-uninteresting books before I start paying to expand my to read pile still more.

This realisation was triggered when James recently proclaimed on the pain of being lost in a bad book and was compounded when I noticed that Goodreads are celebrating my preferred genres with Science Fiction & Fantasy Week this week.

I have already read many of the novels mentioned and there are many more that I want to read. So now would be a good time to get over my aversion to paying for digital content, resist the temptation of free shiny stuff and start catching up with the books and authors that I can reasonably expect to actually enjoy.

Published by Paul

Reader of books, watcher of films, player of games. British father of three, now living in Belgium and making a living from building interfaces.

Published

9 thoughts on “Life’s too short for bad books”

  2. I used to be really bad about feeling I needed to finish a book that I’d paid for and didn’t like, because I’d paid for it. I’ve gotten better by remembering that I don’t need to waste my time on top of wasting my money.

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    1. The thing with me is that I look at my pile of unread books and find it really difficult to justify buying yet more books to add to it.

      I just need to accept that some of these books just aren’t going to be read and stop wasting my time with them.

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      1. A few months ago I bought the first four books in a series in an omnibus form. I liked the first book, but my enjoyment dropped with each successive title. By book four, I was struggling to finish. And yet I almost bought book five because…I have no idea. Lol. Had to give myself a major reality check on that one.

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        1. I can be terrible for that as well. Once I start reading a series I will tend to keep going regardless of how much I enjoy each subsequent book.

          I have a few omnibus collections that I picked up as Humble Bundles. The ones that I wanted I will read, but there are a few in there that I’m not overly interested in and probably won’t bother with.

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  3. That is so true. A few years back I would struggle through a book even though I wasn’t enjoying it. I spent 3 weeks of my life wading through Kings IT. Much quicker to ditch a book now, with IT I suspect it would have been binned at page 5 rather than page 1200…..

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    1. Absolutely.

      The thing is, I used to be quite good at giving up on bad books when I was younger. The problem now is that I start to feel guilty when I know I’m acquiring books faster than I can possibly read them. For some of these I shall have to accept that I will never get around to reading them.

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  4. Leaving a book in the middle is a little frustrating, but I need to be true to myself. When the bell rings in my head and says: Stop trying to stir that cream that’s not for you. With a little sadness I must accept, I was wrong to choose a book. The book is not for me or I am not the right reader for that book.
    Greeting

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    1. Yes, it’s not that the book is necessarily bad it’s just not for me.

      I’m not particularly unhappy about abandoning such a book, but I have too many books like this and am now finding it difficult to justify buying more books for myself when I have so many unread books already.

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