As a reader, what makes you stop reading a Novel?

[Hotswimmer]

I'll preface, I'm a science fiction fan, more the science type as opposed to the fantasy/adventure reader (although I do like both.)
For me poorly crafted science, or jumping around from character to character without having a premise or principle group of characters to really sink your teeth into. Pages of vagueness or skirting around the story makes me lose interest.

So in your favourite genre, what has made you put down what you expected to be a good book and made you lose interest?

 

[Auden James]

Bad writing.

 

[KeithD]

I can't remember ever having stopped reading a novel that I started to read. I know it's irrational, but both my wife and I keep lists of everything we've read and, to try to keep up with her, I can't afford to stop reading something I've started and thus not be able to put it on the list.

 

[SamScribble]

As the chap in the hat said: Bad writing.

 

[ishtat]

I can't remember ever having stopped reading a novel that I started to read. I know it's irrational, but both my wife and I keep lists of everything we've read and, to try to keep up with her, I can't afford to stop reading something I've started and thus not be able to put it on the list.

Hilary Mantell might test your patience a little, she makes a story unnecessarily complex. If you really want to get cross, another female, Patricia Cornwell might do it.

She started out with some good books and has managed to turn herself into a pretentious bore. She gives me the impression that she has a very high opinion of herself. Perhaps it's just me but I have given up on her.

 

[Healwsteel]

I like sci-fi and science fantasy as well. I love The Witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski. I don't like the Netflix series. It started OK, but then proceeded to do the books a major injustice.

I think my current mental state has a lot to do with it. When I was younger and didn't mind all of the jumping around, Stephen King's The Dark Tower series kept my interest. Now I'm old and just want to get to the point. LOL

One thing I will drop a book for is complete lack of suspense. If I'm on page 5 and zombies have chewed through my leg and I know the full story of how and why they are there I will put it down for good.

 

[ElectricBlue]

These days, often the length, where a tighter edit would do. I'll often find myself reading backwards scene by scene from the end, to find out what happened, and not bother with the middle.

I'll often go to a library, borrow half a dozen books and read twenty or so pages and give up, and only finish one. Why waste your time reading stuff that, well, wastes your time?

 

[SamScribble]

These days, often the length, where a tighter edit would do.

I know of what you speak, EB.

A friend and I often suggest books to one another. (She's a former Professor of English.) And, recently, we both decided that there is currently a trend to 'pad' novels. As a case in point, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was a nice idea, well written, but it was about a third too long. (Mind you, it's only when you get to the end that you realise this - so neither of us actually stopped reading.)

 

[CyranoJ]

Takes a lot to stop me from reading a novel once it's hooked me past the first twenty pages. The sole example that comes to mind is Poul Anderson's Harvest of Stars, which turned out to be an especially obnoxious libertarian political screed that tried my patience beyond its limit at the hundred-page mark.

(Let it be known that I've finished out many a libertarian screed-disguised-as-SF to the end, including Vernor Vinge's various novels and Hogan's Inherit the Stars. Couldn't get there with Anderson's novel. It was just dull.)

 

[litfan10]

I am a life long compulsive, obsessive reader. I can't help it.

With one exception, I have never stopped reading anything I've read. I always have a lot to chose from and usually research my choices a bit so I know what I'm getting into.

That exception: EL James Fifty Shades of Gray. The poor grammar; I just couldn't do it. I couldn't stop proof reading as I tried to read it. Nope.

My least favorite book that I read was James Patterson's Zoo. I was so excited to read it and loved Patterson. Great writer and he really is a great guy besides. The publisher and his editor raved that this was his best book to date.

I found he was so passionate about his message (we need to stop global warming now) that his story, plot and characters got shoved aside way too many times. I was so disappointed. But I still finished it.

 

[CyranoJ]

Just about any Grisham novel makes me want to abandon it on bad copy-editing grounds; never understood how major publishers settle for that display.

 

[XerXesXu]

I'll preface, I'm a science fiction fan, more the science type as opposed to the fantasy/adventure reader (although I do like both.)
For me poorly crafted science, or jumping around from character to character without having a premise or principle group of characters to really sink your teeth into. Pages of vagueness or skirting around the story makes me lose interest.

So in your favourite genre, what has made you put down what you expected to be a good book and made you lose interest?

If, after the first few paragraphs, I'm still thinking about my 'to-do' list, and not wondering what happens next.

 

[KeithD]

Hilary Mantell might test your patience a little, she makes a story unnecessarily complex. If you really want to get cross, another female, Patricia Cornwell might do it.

Thankfully, I've never heard of Mantell. I do read the cover blurbs and often check up on an author before picking up their book. Also, most of my reading is in covering the entire list of authors I already know I like. If my wife slips a novel on my nightstand, I feel obligated to read it, though--in case she asks me if I had. She doesn't send all she reads my way (as I don't send all I read her way). I'm not all that sure she reads my own mainstream spy novels. I certainly don't ask her to critique or proof them.

I agree with you on Pat Cornwell. She's one of those authors, like Rita Mae Brown, who I actually know and only read because I was afraid they'd ask me what I thought about their last book. My wife still reads Rita Mae and puts her books on my nightstand, so I still suffer through her talking animals and mourn what she could be writing (some of her nonfiction work is stunningly good). At least with Brown, she's writing about my area and includes people I know as characters.

In Cornwell's case, she came over to Charlottesville far too often while living in Richmond and romancing the governor's wife for background material for her books. She was never impressed when I kept saying her protagonist was an off-putting whiny bitch (but then so is Pat Cornwell, which I found is often a tell for the author. In working briefly with Sara Gruen, I found her to be as insufferably self-centered as her protagonist in Riding Lessons was). When Cornwell was run out of Richmond and went, I think, to New York, I stopped reading her books with a great sigh of relief.

OK, OK, I do remember having started Ulysses a couple of times, with no progress beyond the first dozen pages.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'll preface, I'm a science fiction fan, more the science type as opposed to the fantasy/adventure reader (although I do like both.)
For me poorly crafted science, or jumping around from character to character without having a premise or principle group of characters to really sink your teeth into. Pages of vagueness or skirting around the story makes me lose interest.

So in your favourite genre, what has made you put down what you expected to be a good book and made you lose interest?

I can't remember the last time I deliberately stopped mid-book, but there's one pretty successful fantasy novel from about 15 years ago that I only finished because I was on a small boat, two hours from land, with nothing else to do. (In retrospect, "give the book to the waves" might have been a better choice.) I did not read further in the series.

Like a lot of fantasy stories, it starts with a Cool Idea and then doesn't think through the consequences - so much of the setting is generic pseudo-medieval fantasy even where it makes no sense for it to work that way. (Why do you have bandits living in the wilds preying on travelers, when traveling in the wilds is so dangerous that virtually nobody does it?) And once you notice that the trade economy of the setting appears to come from a popular board game, there's no unseeing that.

The real deal-breaker, though, was the rapiness of the setting. Two hundred pages of constantly reminding the reader that women in this world are at risk of getting raped, and building up a major female character who gets raped... not even as part of her own story, not really, but so the male hero can get righteously angry and have an excuse to smite some butt. The story dwells more on his angst about killing the rapebandits than on the emotional aftermath for her. The main consequence from her POV is that, having been raped, she decides that since she's no longer a virgin she's now free to fuck the male hero.

Bleah. Left me wanting a shower.

 

[MillieDynamite]

The only time I stop a novel, or a short work for that matter, is if it bores me.

 

[GinnyPPC]

An author friend once told me that some books are so good that you can't pick them up again once you put them down.

 

[SimonDoom]

There's only one novel I've started, several times, without completing, and that's James Joyce's Ulysses. It's just very, very dense. One of these days I will read it all the way through. I can't even begin to tell how many times my eyeballs have read "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan."

 

[ElectricBlue]

There's only one novel I've started, several times, without completing, and that's James Joyce's Ulysses. It's just very, very dense. One of these days I will read it all the way through. I can't even begin to tell how many times my eyeballs have read "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan."

You and me, both. I reckon I've got about fifty pages in half a dozen times, and stopped, exhausted.

Also, that bastard Proust. I reckon I got into the bloody orchard a few times, but my god, make something happen!

 

[Wifetheif]

I'll preface, I'm a science fiction fan, more the science type as opposed to the fantasy/adventure reader (although I do like both.)
For me poorly crafted science, or jumping around from character to character without having a premise or principle group of characters to really sink your teeth into. Pages of vagueness or skirting around the story makes me lose interest.

So in your favourite genre, what has made you put down what you expected to be a good book and made you lose interest?

I'm a glutton for punishment. I'm on the patron for "357 Pages We'll Never Get Back" a podcast dedicated to finding the worst literature imaginable. Some of the books I've read along with the podcast are so bad that they are hysterical, others are an absolute chore to get through. They have covered all the books of Ernest Cline. How the hell did he ever get a contract? (The podcast takes its name from the length of Cline's Ready Player One) How did his crap ever turn into a best seller? I mean he is really, really bad. Piss poor grammar, pedestrian prose, and little plot. They also tackled Dan Brown's "Digital Fortress" which I repeatedly hurled against the wall because it was SO stupid and SO poorly written. Again, how did that guy get a contract? They also tackled Bram Stoker's "Lair of the White Worm" which is generally considered one of the worst books ever written in English and the worst horror novel ever. It takes quite a lot for me to stop reading a book once I start. The thing about the podcast is that we can all commiserate and share the pain equally. The guys that do the podcast are hysterical and are also involved with RiffTraxx, the movie riffing gang.
In all honesty, the podcast has made me a much better writer by showing me so many bad examples to avoid. Some say it is unfair to mock writers because at least they put so much work into their endeavors but I disagree. We are currently working on "Modelland" by Tyra Banks. It's over five hundred pages long and was pared down from a thousand-page first draft and was supposed to be the first part of a trilogy. Fortunately, good taste and reader revulsion made sure the second and third books never materialized.

 

[HeyAll]

Interesting thread

No order:

-- Overwritten, where it's difficult to understand

-- Too simple, where it looks so basic

-- Too many unecessary details, especially long descriptions on the weather, that's the worst.

-- Nothing happens. I like novels that start fast.

 

[Payne_Hall]

I can't remember the last time I deliberately stopped mid-book, but there's one pretty successful fantasy novel from about 15 years ago that I only finished because I was on a small boat, two hours from land, with nothing else to do. (In retrospect, "give the book to the waves" might have been a better choice.) I did not read further in the series.

Can I beg for the title? Because I swear I’ve read something like the description before.

 

[PennameWombat]

I can't remember the last time I deliberately stopped mid-book, but there's one pretty successful fantasy novel from about 15 years ago that I only finished because I was on a small boat, two hours from land, with nothing else to do. (In retrospect, "give the book to the waves" might have been a better choice.) I did not read further in the series.
<snip>

I too would like to know the title to avoid it.

As to the OP's question and the last point here, there are a few series that I knew were series when I dove into book 1. In a few cases, that was it. I managed to get through book 1, but various reasons caused me to say 'meh.'

There was one series that I made it about 5 books in, although even at that point it was already getting very repetitive [pun intended] and the fifth book almost entirely lifted the plot of book 3 and I checked out. It was space opera with some thought-provoking points and a very good alien. The author's web page claimed "I have a plan for 10 books in the series." Last checked, that phrase had been wiped from his web site and at the moment it's on book 9 of a planned, ahem, 14 book series (each book is about 150,000+ words, so it's not like he's not keeping busy). I've noticed on the Facebook group dedicated to the series that even some of the truly faithful are getting fed up.

The one thing that will usually get me to kick out of a book though, is character stupidity that's constant or just extreme. I know that half of the people are below average, but... Way too much 'oh, if this character does something even kind of intelligent, my plot goes to hell.' Another where characters are hiding key information from each other not for any rational reason but to keep the plot going.

 

[Bramblethorn]

They also tackled Bram Stoker's "Lair of the White Worm" which is generally considered one of the worst books ever written in English and the worst horror novel ever.

Oh god yes. I only made it through that one out of morbid curiosity to see just how bad it could get. (Answer: very very bad indeed.) I understand there's an edited version which is significantly shorter, but much better just seeing the Ken Russell film instead.

Can I beg for the title? Because I swear I’ve read something like the description before.

I too would like to know the title to avoid it.

Peter Brett, "The Painted Man", which I think is "The Warded Man" in US markets.

 

[Rob_Howard]

If I'm not bothered for the character(s), no matter what genre it is, I give up on the book.

 

[Payne_Hall]

Peter Brett, "The Painted Man", which I think is "The Warded Man" in US markets.

*gasps in horror* This was not at all what I was thinking of!

But Arlen and Twilight Dancer! I have to set aside a few happy memories to see different perspectives sometimes, but… I could see this one if I stop and think about it enough, to be honest. It kind of hold hands with a lot of people who have a bad opinion of Mark Lawrence’s book Prince of Thorns. Jorg was a bit of an asshole.

I’m sorry you didn’t like it, though. I was just talking about that book with someone tonight, actually I haven’t gotten a chance to read the last book yet, but there was a review where someone said they hadn’t been so disappointed since Queen of Fire by Anthony Ryan and now I’m scared.