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

[SheilaT]

15. Never feel guilty about putting a book down.

With all due respect to those who always finish, because they feel in the end it's worth it, I'm on the "Life's too short to waste time reading a book you don't like" wagon.

The same way we have very different tastes in what we like to read, our inclination to finish or not finish is personal. For many years I'd always finish a book I started, until I turned forty or maybe fifty, and I realized that there is simply not enough time to read all the books I want to read, so putting down a book that's not working for me is the right choice.

I mostly get books out of the library these days, and try to restrict my buying to books I can't get from the library, or think I'll want to reread someday, or refer to in some way. Right now I have four books checked out, 14 on hold, two of which are ready to be picked up, and 122 on the "books I want to check out and read at some point" list. I also have somewhere upwards of a hundred unread books in my small home. Haven't the energy to do an actual count, but that feels like a good estimate. My biggest problem is that I read both fiction and non fiction, many genres, many topics. It would be easier to tell you what categories I don't read.

So anyway, if a book simply isn't keeping your interest after whatever you think is a reasonable point, then drop it and read something else. You won't regret it.