1drneutron
There are just those times when the book you're reading isn't doing it for you. But some of us have trouble putting it down and moving on.
For those times, Nancy Pearl suggested her Rule of 50:
If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit. Since that number gets smaller and smaller as we get older and older, our big reward is that when we turn 100, we can judge a book by its cover!
You don't have to agree with the specifics, but don't be afraid to set that book aside and move on to something better.
And then talk about it here!
This is our space to chat about the book failures in our lives. Tell us why you didn't like the book everyone else seems to love. Tell us why you didn't finish the novel that looked so promising at first. Tell us why you couldn't stand the writing. Or the plot. Or the characters.
And get some (metaphorical) tea and sympathy if that's what you need.
Fire away!
For those times, Nancy Pearl suggested her Rule of 50:
If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit. Since that number gets smaller and smaller as we get older and older, our big reward is that when we turn 100, we can judge a book by its cover!
You don't have to agree with the specifics, but don't be afraid to set that book aside and move on to something better.
And then talk about it here!
This is our space to chat about the book failures in our lives. Tell us why you didn't like the book everyone else seems to love. Tell us why you didn't finish the novel that looked so promising at first. Tell us why you couldn't stand the writing. Or the plot. Or the characters.
And get some (metaphorical) tea and sympathy if that's what you need.
Fire away!
2fuzzi
Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie S. Tolan
I Pearl Ruled this book at page 60. I don't like any of the characters, and even eccentric characters should be somewhat likable. The Penderwick and Blossoms (Betsy Byars) series have likable, 3 dimensional eccentric characters, so it can be done well. It wasn't here.
What really amazes me is this book won a Newbery. I don't see how.
3ritacate
I love this! I'm on the farther end of 50s and it was probably at about 52 that I decided with less than 50 years left I don't need to waste any precious minute on a stupid book. I still finish a few where I don't care at all about the characters, but am still curious about how the story is resolved.
4ArlieS
My first pearl rule of the year: Children of time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
This science fiction novel has 3 more or less separate threads, and bounces between them for at least the first 200 pages. I liked only one of those threads; the others were too dark for me. I also dislike the technique of jumping from thread to thread, just when the one I'd been reading gets especially interesting, and tend to put the book down on a thread switch.
I started this on January 25. I was only 213 pages in, of 629, by Feb 29. It's due back at the library on March 8, having run out of renewals. It's time to call it quits, even though the various groups from its three threads are finally meeting. The thread I liked has developed its own dark content now, making it even less attractive to me, even though they seem to have averted their impending doom, at least for the immediate present.
It's time to give up on this book, and not bother reclaiming it from the library at some future time, let alone reading its two sequels.
This science fiction novel has 3 more or less separate threads, and bounces between them for at least the first 200 pages. I liked only one of those threads; the others were too dark for me. I also dislike the technique of jumping from thread to thread, just when the one I'd been reading gets especially interesting, and tend to put the book down on a thread switch.
I started this on January 25. I was only 213 pages in, of 629, by Feb 29. It's due back at the library on March 8, having run out of renewals. It's time to call it quits, even though the various groups from its three threads are finally meeting. The thread I liked has developed its own dark content now, making it even less attractive to me, even though they seem to have averted their impending doom, at least for the immediate present.
It's time to give up on this book, and not bother reclaiming it from the library at some future time, let alone reading its two sequels.
5ArlieS
My second pearl rule of the year: American midnight : the Great War, a violent peace, and democracy's forgotten crisis by Adam Hochschild
This is a book about repression in the United States, during and after World War One (then known as the "Great War"). I was learning a lot of very ugly specifics, though the picture painted is pretty close to what my left-leaning Canadian parents seemed to expect from patriotic Americans and their government(s) as of the early 1960s. (The biggest difference perhaps is that the violence shown in this book had a broader range of targets than my parents might have expected.)
It's also a book about resistance to that repression, but at least in the early part it's very much a doomed resistance: look what so-and-so did before they stuck him/her in jail, or sometimes murdered him/her.
The level of ugly behaviour depicted was too much for me, particularly when it's depicted as more or less official policy, not the excesses of a few aberrant individuals. Reading the book was upsetting me a lot more than I cared to deal with.
This is a book about repression in the United States, during and after World War One (then known as the "Great War"). I was learning a lot of very ugly specifics, though the picture painted is pretty close to what my left-leaning Canadian parents seemed to expect from patriotic Americans and their government(s) as of the early 1960s. (The biggest difference perhaps is that the violence shown in this book had a broader range of targets than my parents might have expected.)
It's also a book about resistance to that repression, but at least in the early part it's very much a doomed resistance: look what so-and-so did before they stuck him/her in jail, or sometimes murdered him/her.
The level of ugly behaviour depicted was too much for me, particularly when it's depicted as more or less official policy, not the excesses of a few aberrant individuals. Reading the book was upsetting me a lot more than I cared to deal with.
6alcottacre
My first Pearl ruled book is one that is especially disappointing for me to give up on, but life is too dadgum short. I loved Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close but at the 50-page point of Here I Am, I decided enough was enough. I was not about to have to go through 500+ pages. I was really looking forward to the book - and it was a shared read with Kim, to boot. *sigh*
7m.belljackson
Pearled Pianos and Flowers after first chapter overflowed with Death and Depression.
Great book title and wonderful photograph premise unfortunately unwound...
Great book title and wonderful photograph premise unfortunately unwound...
8ArlieS
I won't be finishing Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions by Phil Zuckerman; I didn't even last 33 pages for a proper pearl rule.
This book appears to be an apologia for irreligion. It spent the first ten pages combatting the idea that no irreligious person could possibly be good.
I'm aware that many religious people believe that all humans are evil, and would, either routinely or from time to time, commit every kind of cruelty, dishonesty and similar things, as well as violating more-important (sic) rules about what deity allows them to wear, who deity allows them to consensually fuck, and similar. In this belief system, only the fear of reprisal prevents this routine immorality, and only fear of reprisal by deity can prevent bad behaviour not expected to be discovered by humans.
I don't think much of the kind of ethics that amounts to "do what you are told lest you be punished". Perhaps this level of ethics is the best some religious people can manage, in which case I feel sorry for them - and also afraid of them, lest their deity tell them to e.g. commit mass murder - whether through human intermediaries or via (ahem) internal messaging (delusion).
Fortunately, in practice most of those who express this belief don't apply it to themselves; other, bad people are restrained by fear of divine retribution, but they are, in their own opinion, good people (TM). Or they simply don't think about it, but don't in fact have impulses to torture, rape and murder other people, or even to rob them, beyond a bit of cheating on their taxes and similar. Likewise, they lack impulses to pathological lying, and merely repeat The Truth (TM) according to their in group, tell their spouses their new outfit looks wonderful, and similar venial lies.
Ten pages of discussing the need to demonstrate to the average American that it's possible to be good without being religious had me overwhelmed with rage. The headache didn't go away until the next morning.
If anything, particularly with current American politics, I need demonstrations that it's possible for a religious person to nonetheless be a good person, and particularly for an American fundamentalist not to favor major harm to people unlike themselves. I know better than to believe that all religious people - even all fundamentalists - are either unremittingly evil or actively at war with everyone unlike themselves. But my _gut_ isn't anywhere near as clear on this as my _mind_, and this book was reinforcing my gut's impression of even the average American Christian.
This book appears to be an apologia for irreligion. It spent the first ten pages combatting the idea that no irreligious person could possibly be good.
I'm aware that many religious people believe that all humans are evil, and would, either routinely or from time to time, commit every kind of cruelty, dishonesty and similar things, as well as violating more-important (sic) rules about what deity allows them to wear, who deity allows them to consensually fuck, and similar. In this belief system, only the fear of reprisal prevents this routine immorality, and only fear of reprisal by deity can prevent bad behaviour not expected to be discovered by humans.
I don't think much of the kind of ethics that amounts to "do what you are told lest you be punished". Perhaps this level of ethics is the best some religious people can manage, in which case I feel sorry for them - and also afraid of them, lest their deity tell them to e.g. commit mass murder - whether through human intermediaries or via (ahem) internal messaging (delusion).
Fortunately, in practice most of those who express this belief don't apply it to themselves; other, bad people are restrained by fear of divine retribution, but they are, in their own opinion, good people (TM). Or they simply don't think about it, but don't in fact have impulses to torture, rape and murder other people, or even to rob them, beyond a bit of cheating on their taxes and similar. Likewise, they lack impulses to pathological lying, and merely repeat The Truth (TM) according to their in group, tell their spouses their new outfit looks wonderful, and similar venial lies.
Ten pages of discussing the need to demonstrate to the average American that it's possible to be good without being religious had me overwhelmed with rage. The headache didn't go away until the next morning.
If anything, particularly with current American politics, I need demonstrations that it's possible for a religious person to nonetheless be a good person, and particularly for an American fundamentalist not to favor major harm to people unlike themselves. I know better than to believe that all religious people - even all fundamentalists - are either unremittingly evil or actively at war with everyone unlike themselves. But my _gut_ isn't anywhere near as clear on this as my _mind_, and this book was reinforcing my gut's impression of even the average American Christian.
9alcottacre
I am giving up on One Hundred Years of Solitude for the third (and I think, final) time. I just do not get this book. I went past page 100 and decided that my life is too short and there are too many other books out there for me to read and love to keep pounding my head against this particular one.
10Tess_W
>9 alcottacre: I wished I had pearl-ruled that one. It was awful, I don't know why I completed it!
This year I pearl-ruled Cathedral by Ben Hopkins. In theory, this should be a good read. However, there was a plethora of characters I could not keep straight as well as their relationships. I quite after reading 50/600+ pages.
I'm somewhat of a completist, but I'm getting better at saying "enough already!" I've DNF'd 24 books since 2014.
This year I pearl-ruled Cathedral by Ben Hopkins. In theory, this should be a good read. However, there was a plethora of characters I could not keep straight as well as their relationships. I quite after reading 50/600+ pages.
I'm somewhat of a completist, but I'm getting better at saying "enough already!" I've DNF'd 24 books since 2014.
11ArlieS
>10 Tess_W: Congratulations. It's very much a learned skill, and the examples of other people in this group have helped me learn it, at least to the extent I've so far managed.
12alcottacre
>10 Tess_W: I am so glad to know that I am not the only one, Tess!
I am getting better at saying "enough already!" too, but I still need to work on it, lol.
I am getting better at saying "enough already!" too, but I still need to work on it, lol.
13m.belljackson
With all the fun Ocean Beach books, I was on a Wendy Wax roll until
WHILE WE WERE WATCHING DOWNTOWN ABBEY.
A quick adios to the rich and boring...
Fortunately The Break Up Book club promises to be a return to her happy days.
WHILE WE WERE WATCHING DOWNTOWN ABBEY.
A quick adios to the rich and boring...
Fortunately The Break Up Book club promises to be a return to her happy days.
14alcottacre
I have had Adam Levin's The Instructions on my list of books to get to this year so I was finally getting around to it this month - but it is going to be a DNF for me. I am at 100 pages in and the book is just not worth the effort IMHO. It is over 1000 pages long - and life is too short. *sigh*
15m.belljackson
Pearled E.M. Delafield's first Provincial Ladies Diary after the husband drowned the kittens.
16m.belljackson
Yet another Quick Pearl: MY READING LIFE BY PAT CONROY.
I had not yet read this prolific author so was looking forward to joining his fans.
No way - Conroy devotes An Entire Chapter in over the top praise for unredeemably RACIST
Gone with the Wind. What a horrible surprise.
I had not yet read this prolific author so was looking forward to joining his fans.
No way - Conroy devotes An Entire Chapter in over the top praise for unredeemably RACIST
Gone with the Wind. What a horrible surprise.
