
Nancy Pearl’s Rule of 50 for dropping a bad book - ingve
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/nancy-pearls-rule-of-50-for-dropping-a-bad-book/article565170/
======
m0nty
I had the interesting experience of returning to two of Iain M Banks's novels,
both of which I had read in my late 20s (20 years ago). _Feersum Endjinn_ was
fun but not at all profound: I had found it to be very thought-provoking the
first time around. In fact, it was the first Banks book I read and it had me
hooked. _Consider Phlebas_ I had read and enjoyed, but it seemed flat,
uninspired and uninteresting on second reading. I abandoned it after several
chapters. I hardly ever abandon books but have done so more often recently -
encroaching age does lead to impatience in some things. I'm not sure how I
would feel returning to _Use of Weapons_ and _The Wasp Factory_ , both of
which I found shocking and profound the first time around.

So the point of this is, your opinion of something might change, or maybe it's
just that storytelling is like a magic trick which requires the wholehearted
participation of writer and reader to be successful. If you're not interested,
you should quit and find something else to do.

I'm the same with television - cannot watch _The Wire_ too many times, cannot
watch most other things even once.

~~~
snowwrestler
I loved _Jurassic Park_ by Michael Crichton when I first read it as a
teenager.

Recognizing how far my taste has developed since then, I recently re-read
it... and found it to be a shrill anti-science screed wrapped in an action
movie script.

~~~
vinceguidry
Novels are written to satisfy the social milieu of the time in which it's
written. Society's moved on since Jurassic Park, why _would_ it still be
relevant?

~~~
robotresearcher
If the book addresses human fundamentals instead of transient silliness, it
can last forever. The Count of Monte Cristo (1844), Heart of Darkness (1899)
and Jane Eyre (1847) are still relevant _and_ enjoyable, for example.

~~~
vinceguidry
I loved the Count of Monte Christo, and took pains to get an unabridged copy.
I got through it, but if I'd had _anything_ else to do at the time, I don't
think I would have.

~~~
robotresearcher
The impatient sci-fi fan can can substitute Alfred Bester's resetting in
space. Much shorter and has some cool ideas about teleporting in addition to
the revenge served cold. Lacks the lovely florid language of the original.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stars_My_Destination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stars_My_Destination)

~~~
jacobolus
Or try the Japanese anime version,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gankutsuou:_The_Count_of_Monte...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gankutsuou:_The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo)

------
shadowsun7
What has worked really well for me has been to follow Peter Bregman's reading
technique, which he got from history professor Michael Jimenez (story and full
article here: [https://hbr.org/2016/02/how-to-read-a-book-a-
week](https://hbr.org/2016/02/how-to-read-a-book-a-week)):

    
    
      1. Check out the author’s bio online to get a sense of the person’s bias and perspective. 
      2. Read the title, subtitle, front flap, table of contents. Figure out the big-picture argument of the book, and how that argument is laid out.  
      3. Read the introduction and conclusion word for word to figure out where the author starts from and where he eventually gets to.  
      4. Read/skim each chapter: Read the title, the first few paragraphs or the first few pages of the chapter to figure out how the author is using the chapter and where it fits into the argument of the whole book. Then skim through headings and subheadings to get an idea of the flow. Read the first sentence and last sentence of each paragraph. Once you get an argument, feel free to move on to the next argument, skipping over the many repeated case studies or examples.  
      5. End with the table of contents again, looking through, and summarising each.
    

I've found that this has worked wonders for my reading. A year or so later, I
refined this technique further, as I found that it didn't work for all books
(it works for 'single-idea' books, which I call 'branch books'; it doesn't
work as well for 'map of ideas' books, which I call 'tree books'.) For
example, _The Long Tail_ is the an example of a branch book, and _Thinking:
Fast and Slow_ is an example of a tree book.

(I've written a longer post about the categories here:
[https://commoncog.com/blog/the-3-kinds-of-non-fiction-
book/](https://commoncog.com/blog/the-3-kinds-of-non-fiction-book/))

 _Edited for formatting_

~~~
ericdykstra
I'm trying to just not read "single-idea" books at all any more, especially of
the "take a 30 minute TEDx talk and turn it into 352 pages" variety. If a book
isn't worth reading cover-to-cover, it's not worth reading at all.

After suffering through most of "Grit" I just couldn't take it any more and
vowed not to read a book like that again. It was one of a few books I've read
that's just taking an existing idea (in this case, trait conscientiousness),
re-branding it as something else (grit), and then page after page of hammering
the same point + anecdotes.

~~~
vazamb
I am glad other people get that feeling too. A lot of pop-sci books are not
terribly bad but could be cut down to 1/4 of their length. Another example for
this is "Deep work" by Cal Newport. Great idea, something to actively think
about. But not necessary to be spread out across 300 pages...

~~~
byproxy
As a counterexample, I felt "The Information" could have easily been three
times its size.

~~~
colechristensen
I felt like _The Information_ was published when the author got tired of
revising halfway through. It started very well but the quality seemed to slide
as it progressed. It certainly wasn't the low quality meandering pop-sci book
you'll find so often, but I found it lacking in different ways. You might also
like _Dark Hero of the Information Age_

------
DEADBEEFC0FFEE
I definitely used to be a hardcore finisher. It's a really difficult habit to
break, as it feels like personal failure, and violation if principle. My wife
was also, and independently a book finisher.

I don't recall the realisation that life is short and there is so much to do.
Neither of us are finishers now. But I do have a special shelf for unfinished
books. They stare at me.

~~~
shoo
one thing i started doing in recent years is just borrowing heaps of books
from the library. trawl the catalogue, see what's ready for borrowing, borrow
half a dozen ones that look interesting or are on the reading backlog. then
start reading a few of them in parallel. if some of them don't hold your
attention, stop reading and focus on the ones that are interesting. take them
all back to the library when they're due, read or not.

edit:

okay, so now for the obvious question, what's the correct way of framing the
which-books-should-be-finished problem, and what's the optimal strategy?

is this a bandit algorithm thing? at each interval t, sample a page from a
book according to gittins indices to minimise lifetime regret? does it need
monte carlo tree search?

~~~
noelwelsh
Not a classical bandit because the arms have a finite lifetime (the arm is no
longer active once you read the whole book) and you know this lifetime.
Definitely can be viewed as some form of RL problem. For me the challenge is
how you define rewards and hence what information reading part of a book gives
you about the total reward for completing the book. Maybe assume some
smoothness criteria, so that the reward for reading part n of a book is highly
informative of reading part n+1, but less informative of part n+2, and so on.
More formally, each book gives some total reward on completion and that reward
is distributed according to some stochastic process.

Greedy strategies probably work reasonably well.

------
pjc50
Definitely a "journey" vs "destination" thing going on here. If you're
interested in finding how a novel ends, of course you can skip to the back;
but hardly anyone does that, because it's the process of reaching there that's
the important (and supposed to be enjoyable) part. So if it's not an enjoyable
process, it's worth questioning what social ideas of "worthiness" are leading
you to press on with it. Doubly so with "classic" books, where you might need
to read a whole other chunk of canon to have the proper context for
understanding why this book is supposed to be good in the first place. Or you
need to skip some bits that have aged badly.

For non-fiction, it's worth separating books which sincerely have a thesis and
supporting arguments from books which are trying to sell you an idea, even
(especially) if it's an idea you really want to hear.

There is no longer a "canon" that you can expect everyone to have read; the
world is far too big and contains too many people, books, cultures and ideas.

(For youtube videos, when I'm trying to get information on something, I employ
a "rule of third": just drop the slider a third of the way in and skip all the
personal introduction and setup, to see if this video might actually get to
the point.)

~~~
glangdale
The point is that if you're not enjoying the journey, you skip to the end and
take out the "I need to get to the destination" motivation for finishing. I do
this all the time: if the book is getting tedious, I prevent myself from
compulsively finishing it by "giving away the end" to myself.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I do the opposite. If I'm finding the novel a slog, I'll read the Wikipedia
synopsis. If the payoff seems worth it, I'll keep going - I think that most
novels where a "twist" isn't the only selling point are worth reading even if
you know the plot.

(And if the payoff doesn't, I drop the book. That's what I did with Mieville's
Embassytown at the 50% mark.)

------
Munksgaard
I suffer under the same affliction Nancy is describing: I cannot bear the idea
of putting down a book that I've started.

Currently I'm struggling to get through Gödel, Escher, Bach. I like the ideas
presented, especially the parallels between music and art (which I know little
about) on one hand, and mathematics and computer science (which I know more
about) on the other hand. But I think that it lacks focus and a clear thread.
Additionally, I already know most of the mathematical concepts presented in
the book, so I don't feel like I benefit much from the long chapters detailing
various proofs and formal systems. To make matters worse, Hofstadter avoids
using conventional notation and terminology, so I'll be reading through page
upon page of detailed descriptions of his own little formal system only to
finally realize "Oh, he's just describing propositional logic in a roundabout
way".

Meanwhile, I've got a bunch of other interesting books sitting on my shelf
that I'd like to read. Alas, there are only about 300 pages left...

~~~
madhadron
I give you permission to put down GEB. If you already know some logic and
music, there's no point in reading it.

~~~
kthejoker2
I disgree, but only the stories of Tortoise and Achilles. They're the most
original bits in the book and they make great repeat reading, reading aloud to
others, etc.

------
pitt1980
More generally than just books,

when to quit, is a really hard problem

I'm reminded of the Hacker New link from a month or so ago about 'The
emotional journey of creating anything great'
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164822](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164822)

where most of the time invested in doing something, looks like all the time
you invested, will end up having a poor ROI

pretty much every point there except the end looks like a case study for
calling it a sunk cost and quitting to do something else.

Its a hard thing to know when your sample size of data is big enough to make
conclusions that have consequences on

(I guess all in all that's the point, you need to use some heuristic, and the
link is arguing for a heuristic of 50 pgs when reading a book, which seems
like a rule of thumb that I have no particular objection to)

~~~
XorNot
For me it would've been 1 year into my (ultimately failed) Ph. D project. I
would be a lot wealthier now if I'd launched into the tech world then and been
working all that time.

------
zaidf
_And if, at the bottom of Page 50, all you 're really interested in is who
marries whom, or who the murderer is, then turn to the last page and find
out._

Ironically, I simply wanted to know what the actual rule was. It takes some
effort to find it hidden in the middle of the article.

------
egypturnash
My rule is that you can’t drop a book until you’ve read at least as much as
the most you’ve told someone else to read before giving up on something you’ve
loved. Saying “Oh, Wheel Of Time is GREAT once you’ve slogged through the
first three shitty tomes!” means you are _fucked_ by this rule.

I am also pushing fifty and have read a lot, life’s too goddamn short to not
give up a book the moment you stop giving any fucks about it.

~~~
bena
Yeah, entertainment's purpose is to entertain. If it fails to do that in the
beginning, it's not for you.

The whole you have to watch/read/listen to X amount before passing judgment is
bullshit. If I surround a chocolate cake in three inches of shit, no one will
fault you for not eating through the shit just to get to the cake. It might be
a good cake. It might be the best cake. But I'm not chowing through three
inches of shit just to get it.

Maybe next time, don't cover your cake in shit and see how that goes.

~~~
byproxy
If you're reading purely for entertainment you're entering the act with a
bunch of expectation baggage (and probably looking over some worthwhile
literature in the process).

~~~
bena
Like expecting to be entertained? He was talking about fiction. Mentally
change the word to engagement if you find entertainment too trite.

The point is that if the creator wants their work experienced, they must make
the experience enjoyable in some fashion all the way through.

------
mlthoughts2018
I recently read the book Deep Work by Cal Newport, and I wish I had employed
this 50-page rejection rule instead of pushing through the whole thing.

I’m a big proponent of deep work habits, avoiding open-plan offices, etc., ...
most of the stuff the book talks about. But it is just so poorly and shallowly
written, mixing in little factoids or sound bytes that have no real
evidentiary weight behind them and as a result just go in one ear and out the
other. Most of the advice is entirely subjective, supported by anecdotes about
unrealistically successful people who can use their positions of luck-driven-
success to be sounding boards for whatever grandiose selection bias and
retrospective plaudits they want.

I was very disappointed after seeing the book praised often here on HN. But
boy, it was a total stinker and there are many better books on the topic
(Peopleware, for one).

The whole book of Deep Work could have (and should have) been summarized with
about 5 pages of bullet points, and published just as some blog post. It is
absolutely dreadful as a long form book.

~~~
randcraw
I recently read "Deep Work" too. I found it unenlightening but generally well
written.

Newport's main failing was his laser focus on how to schedule your waking
hours to spend more time doing deep work. At least half of the book addressed
only this. Personally, I'd have preferred to hear more about what deep work
is, what ends it serves, and how to do it better. But I guess we were supposed
to read Csikszentmihalyi's "Flow" for that.

Mostly I came away from the book with deep insights into how Newport manages
his daily routine for maximum productivity. Useful info perhaps, but not what
I sought. However, as a self-help book, Deep Work shines. And seen in this
light, its many 5 star reviews start to make more sense.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
I would disagree in the strongest terms. The book is essentially the opposite
of what you described. It’s strong points are the general discussions of what
deep work is and the differences with shallow work.

As a self-help book, it’s beyond pitiful. The advice given is often totally
impractical for most people and is extremely hard to read because of the
meandering inclusion of useless anecdotes about what this or that CEO does or
the throw-away sound byte statistics cherry picked from old research studies
and quoted out of context.

The closest thing to a self-help guideline that the book gives is to just
state, unqualified, that you should make a ritual out of dedicating certain
hours to deep work that cannot be interrupted by shallow work (unless you’re a
journalist, in which case he advises some totally fictitious concept of just
grabbing deep work time in an ad hoc way, whenever you can).

Really, I was interested in reading it primarily as a self-help guide for how
to effectively enforce deep work time in my schedule despite meeting-oriented
company culture and open plan offices.

In terms of self-help, not only does the book fail to deliver anything useful,
but it could even be considered harmful to the extent that people buy into the
anecdotes and sound bytes in the book.

------
rusk
I remember the first book I intentionally didn't finish. It was a fictional
work that I'd gotten about 85% the way through and I felt the narrative start
to deterioriate. It was one of those books that makes bold promises at the
outset but then kind of just strung you along with increasingly vapid plot
twists and I was at a point in my life where I was learning to be impatient
and I just said _fuckit_.

Never felt guilty about not finishing a book again. Life's too short to be
giving due diligence to poor authors.

------
ilamont
_Give a book 50 pages. When you get to the bottom of Page 50, ask yourself if
you 're really liking the book._

I can usually tell within 10-20 pages.

I also have the "five minute rule" with TV shows, movies (on streaming
services), and other activities. Only so much time left on this planet.

~~~
bluesroo
I completely agree. I've run into a lot of people who say something like the
following:

> But dude, you just have to get through the first 3 seasons and the show gets
> so good.

No, I'm really fine not wasting 15-30 hours of my life when there's hundreds
of other incredible shows, movies, books, and video games.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Right! When somebody says "You should watch this great new series!" its like
they're saying "You should knit this great afghan!" Man-weeks of work. No
thanks.

------
peteretep
> And if, at the bottom of Page 50, all you're really interested in is who
> marries whom, or who the murderer is, then turn to the last page and find
> out.

Thank God for Wikipedia's plot summaries of books and films.

> there's no way that anyone there will be able to tell (even if they were
> interested) whether you've really read every page of the book you just
> returned.

Unless it was a Kindle book, right? :-P

------
olfactory
I think it makes sense to give it 100 pages, but I read a fair bit faster than
the average person.

I think it is also a question of the other factors indicating that a book
might be worth reading... is it a classic? Have others highly recommended it?
Is it for a book club?

While I'm well aware of sunk cost and realize that it often makes sense to cut
and run, I have had the experience a few times with both books and movies
where it all came into focus right at the end and make the whole thing
worthwhile. If I'd stopped 90% of the way through I never would have had the
moment of appreciation.

Just as a hike through the mountains is often rugged and lacking in scenery,
reaching the peak changes the entire experience and puts the grueling work
needed to get there into proper context.

Some albums are uninviting on the first, second, and even third listens, yet
after a while something is unlocked and the music finally makes sense.

I'd argue that some of the best things are good in spite of being
inaccessible. It's asking a lot of any creator to give us a happy path and
also give us something deep and significant. Sure it happens now and then, but
I prefer the significance over the happy path just as I prefer a carefully
prepared meal to a piece of candy.

The world wants to give us candy... the endorphins of the clickbait headline
are 90% of the endorphins one gets after reading the whole article... the
endorphins from watching a porn scene are 90% of the endorphins of watching a
romance with a plot... a few pop tarts will go down quickly and dampen our
enthusiasm for any cuisine.

------
djtriptych
This is funny because books are about the only thing I really feel compelled
to finish whether I like it or not.

I've abandoned countless side projects, instruments, sports, meals,
friendships etc when they stopped holding value for me.

But once I crack open a book I really feel like I have to finish it before I
can get on with my life. I don't start a lot of books anymore but they tend to
stay on my todo list until I've literally read every word..

~~~
Nannooskeeska
I'm the same way. If I lose interest in a book partway through, I'll stop
reading it and go on to other books for a period of time and finish it later.
I currently have 6 books in my "Reading" list on Goodreads, 5 of which I
started at some point in the last couple of years and haven't finished yet.

------
DanielBMarkham
Having just published a book, and going through a couple of alpha and beta
reader groups, I look at my experiences, the stack of books by my nightstand,
and realize: _most people do not buy books to read them_

They buy books for the promised experience they'll have owning them. I think
most of us heavy readers are not honest enough with ourselves to admit it, but
we're not enamored with the ideas in books as much as the experience. An
unread book is the promise of a good time yet to come.

I don't know about the Rule of 50. I know that some of the best reads I've had
were a struggle for a good, long while until I could finally get into the mind
of the author. I also know that some really awful books were a struggle too --
and they didn't get better.

The problem here is that everybody has authors they are easily able to follow.
The text just sort of flows. For me, Dean Koontz was like that for a while. It
got to the point I started believing a machine was writing these things. They
were enjoyable, easy-to-read, action-packed, and completely forgettable. I
loved them. Used to call them my "airplane books". Pick one up the morning of
travel, finish reading it that day.

Compare that to my current read, "The Brothers Karamazov". I'm struggling, and
it's not the author. It's my mind getting aligned with the author that's
causing the problem. Sometimes it takes a lot more than 50 pages for that to
happen. A little faith is required.

If I had to come up with a rule, I'd go with Pearl's Rule, except for
classics. And I'd add a fallback position: try the audiobook. Many times it's
easier to listen to an audiobook half-way and get the general gist of it.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I don't know about 'most people'. I start reading a book immediately after
buying it.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
It's not unusual for me to get three or four book recommendations in a week.

I try to resist the urge to buy them all, but my ability to purchase books far
exceeds my ability to read them.

~~~
logfromblammo
I don't buy books if I have any left that I haven't already read. But I read
them rather quickly, so the money I spend on books is instead limited by my
willingness to shop for new (to me) books.

When I browse the virtual shelves online, I usually throw a bunch of books on
a gift wish list and intentionally not buy them myself, so that other people
don't have to struggle at birthdays and gifting holidays.

Also, since they were gifts, I get fewer unwanted interruptions as I'm burning
through one of those books after the holiday.

------
cafard
I suspect that I would never have finished _The Man Who Loved Children_ by
Christina Stead if I had followed that rule. As a matter of fact, page 120
might not have sufficed. It stopped me once, in my 20s, but when I picked it
up in my 50s and pushed on, I was very glad I did.

I agree that life is too short to read crummy books through. I do now and then
for a neighborhood book club, with gritted teeth.

------
Amorymeltzer
While I think this is good, my impression is that it works better for fiction
than non-fiction. Most of my reading the past few years has been non-fiction,
and the hardest thing is finding a book on a good subject and with interesting
information, but poorly written or just generally unenjoyable. I know that
continuing will be painful, but I also know that continuing will allow me to
learn about the subject. Not sure 50 pages (or some other metric) works in
this scenario, only real option is to find a better book on the subject!

As for fiction, what really did it for me was listening to the New York Times
Book Review podcast[1], specifically the reviewers and Editor Pamela Paul.
Many of them, especially PP, frequently mention not finishing a book, and
hearing that from them felt liberating. It's still hard, but I figure if they
can put a book down, so can I.

1: [https://www.nytimes.com/column/book-review-
podcast](https://www.nytimes.com/column/book-review-podcast)

------
nothis
I would have dropped every Stephen King book by that measure. Actually, maybe
I should have.

~~~
logfromblammo
I was gifted two of them recently, and it seems like maybe he might have
chosen to sacrifice quality for quantity two or three hundred books ago.

I'm glad I decided to avoid him as an author when I was much younger. He'd
have been better off just writing them as screenplays or teleplays to begin
with.

Someone recently compared my Twitter posts to Stephen King, and I winced
physically. I'm almost certain they meant it as a compliment, though. And
maybe that's good if I wanted to write for the mass market instead of the sci-
fi/fantasy nerds?

------
6ak74rfy
I was until recently one of those people who insisted on finishing any book
(or movie or TV show, for that matter) they started. Otherwise, I wouldn't
feel _closure_. I dropped a few books ( _Lolita_ , _The Pragmatic Programmer_
, _Kitchen Confidential_ etc.) but kept feeling guilty later on. I am glad to
hear from so many people here that dropping in between isn't such a bad thing
after all.

Related question: do you guys have a similar system for research papers? I've
tried reading them a lot but have successfully made it through only a few. At
this point, I even question if the effort in getting through their drudgery is
worth it.

~~~
lallysingh
Research papers deserve no mercy. Mine what you want out of them. Only
reviewers have to read them whole.

~~~
philwelch
You might also want to at least skim the whole thing if you want to use a
research paper to win an argument, if you suspect that your interlocutor will
try and find something to nitpick.

------
jimbokun
Ha, she really does have an action figure!

[https://mcphee.com/products/librarian-action-
figure](https://mcphee.com/products/librarian-action-figure)

------
tw04
If I had followed this, I never would've finished the "A Song of Fire and Ice"
series (game of thrones). I guess technically I may never _FINISH_ since he
hasn't written all the books yet.

It is a VERY painful start. And if you read interviews with Martin, he admits
he had no idea where hew as going with the story until about halfway through
the first book.

~~~
sizzzzlerz
I eagerly read the first 3 books without ever considering abandoning any of
them and I subscribe to the yank-the-bandage approach to dropping books if not
interesting within 20 pages or, towards the end, abandoning if I find myself
skimming or skipping pages. With these, it never happened.

When I read the 4th book, however, A Dance with Dragons, I kept reading far
longer than I would any other book, hoping that it would get better and start
getting somewhere. It never did. It was a slow motion train wreck. Finally, I
threw in the towel and dropped it with no desire to ever go back and finish it
or the 5th book. It did strengthen my resolve to drop bad books early even if
prior books by the author were great reads.

------
weavie
I have the opposite problem, there are so many good books out there that I
will often be reading several at any one time. The ones that just don't grab
me tend to fall to the bottom of the pile and stay there until I realise its
just not going to happen. Then it goes back in the shelf.

------
chris_wot
I remember looking at the Wikipedia history of the Nancy Pearl history and
discovered, to my amusement, that a librarian at the State Library of NSW had
carefully started editing her page, and a bunch of other library related
pages.

------
Koshkin
When deciding whether to buy a book at a book store, I do not usually have a
luxury of reading the first fifty pages; at least, I seem to be able to
discern whether I would _not_ like the book by simply opening the book on a
random page and giving it a quick look. If, for example, the book consists
mostly of conversations, I see it as a "talking heads" book and lose interest;
there may also be other things that could immediately put me off, like "hither
and thither".

------
byproxy
I'm a finisher. But I tend to do my diligence before I start, so even if I am
not particularly thrilled about the book at the end, I find there is usually
something to glean from it. A few nice passages in the context of a book I'm
otherwise not enjoying much is a nice experience, I find. Plus, reading other
styles of writing in general is good for comprehension, I think. The more you
read, the more of what you read starts making sense.

------
sjclemmy
I totally agree with the author. I’m a ‘finisher’ (so tend not to start
things! ;)) Like the author it’s taken me a while to get to the point where I
can ditch a book part way through. But when it comes to books, if you don’t
want to read it, don’t. Forget 50 pages. If it’s boring or annoying simply
stop reading and use your time more wisely.

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menacingly
Does anyone else find it unsatisfying that it's not computed from the outset
but switches to it later after a trigger?

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paulpauper
I usually just read the beginnings of books and then selected chapters for
non-fiction. That's often the best part.

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barking
Probably a fair rule to go by overall But if I'd followed her rule I might not
have read 'Fathers and Sons' through. The first fair chunk of the book I found
extremely boring but at some point I became engrossed and to this day remember
it as one of the books I've enjoyed the most.

~~~
spraak
Hm, maybe the algorithm could be refined to define a threshold of boredom;
should this be met before 50 pages, use the remaining pages (50 minus pages so
far) to randomly select pages to explore for more something exciting ahead.

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segmondy
I rarely read fiction these days so this is a non issue. If I pickup a
fiction, if I'm not into it by the 2nd chapter. I'm tossing it. I don't care
how great the world says it is. If non fiction, I can always jump around to
relevant parts that I care about.

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cannam
Some years ago I had a conversation with a friend about Douglas Coupland's
novel _Microserfs_. He said, "That book annoyed me so much I tore it up, on
the Tube."

I had never thought of _stopping_ reading as such a decisive act.

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your-nanny
I think it's a fine rule; be master of your free time. But beware of the
reasons you are setting it down. Profound books can be difficult reads, and
older books especially were content to make you work for it.

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killjoywashere
Not a rule to apply in the first two years of undergraduate compulsory
classes!

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kazinator
Completely stupid. Give it no more than two or three pages. (Of the real meat,
not any front matter.)

There are way too many books in the world, and too many bad ones, for any
random book to deserve fifty pages of your attention.

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soperj
Gotta say, Love in time of Cholera is terrible for the first 80 pages or so,
but it one of my very favorite books, and doesn't work at all without those
first 80 pages.

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wavefunction
I read quickly so 15 minutes is enough time to make this sort of call. The
more you read the easier it is to determine if a book is good or not, as well.

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WalterBright
These days, I find myself turning more towards non-fiction than fiction.
History books about interesting events, for example.

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cryoshon
i've used the rule of 40 for quite some time now for both fiction and
nonfiction. it does allow for some edge cases where you figure out that the
remaining pages of the book will be very similar and mostly mediocre and you
end up finishing it anyway, but at least it's a known quantity at the outset.

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vzaliva
How do you apply it to Kindle books? What is the equivalent of 50 pages in
Kindle "locations"?

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hervature
When you are 100 years old, I guess you just look at the cover and decide.
After that, people read to you?

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edgarvaldes
From reading all the comments in this thread, it seems than nobody is a
hardcore finisher anymore.

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toolslive
50 is a bit low. Personally, I use 20%.

~~~
spraak
Sounds like you often read books with 250+ pages :)

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dredmorbius
It's the book-halting problem...

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pattisapu
"Don't try." -Bukowski

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shanghaiaway
You don't need a rule to stop reading a book and there's no reason to feel bad
about it

~~~
ramblerman
This is such a simple counterargument to OP, It's funny to see you down-voted.

I guess we all need a system these days to validate our actions, even how we
should spend our free time.

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ythn
Some really good books will get false negatives by this rule, however.

For example: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie.

By the bottom of page 50 I was not enjoying it at all, seemed like a trite
mystery novel. I was ready to put it down but the friend who recommended it
urged me to slog through. And boy was I glad I did. As is common with Agatha
Christie, there is often a huge payoff at the very end (last chapter).

~~~
MBCook
I’m having that problem with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

It takes 120 pages or so to get to the real plot. An amazing amount of time.
But I’m kind of enjoying it and get the feeling once it starts moving I may
really like it.

But at the same time it was so slow for a good portion of the start I’m not
sure I want to continue.

~~~
Uhhrrr
It's a pretty fast read overall. But for me it fell into the category of
"standard thriller fluff"

~~~
MBCook
That’s basically what I expect out of it, but if it’s well written that’s
fine. I’ve mostly been reading Sci-Fi lately so I’m up for the change of pace.

I’m not expecting it to be the next great literary work of the world.

