Is it ever okay to give up on a book?

Some people say no. They are determined to finish whatever book they start reading, no matter how dull or uninteresting the story or material has become. These are the people who keep the book through which they are slogging on the coffee table or nightstand for eons. I’m sure you know at least one person like that.

I used to be one of them—until this month.

It was one of my close friends who is an avid reader who told me that’s it’s okay to give up on a book.

I’ve decided to give up on Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun. A few blog posts back, I mentioned several novels of Crichton’s that I read and thoroughly enjoyed. Rising Sun was absent from that post. I’m not saying that it was poorly written—Crichton’s usual polish was there. But I am saying this:

The book has very little, if anything, to do with science or medicine. When I started reading it, I did not expect a story about either, for I knew this was a murder mystery. It’s perfectly fine with me if Crichton wants to write a murder mystery for a change. But this one seemed to drag. The action seemed to take place mostly in a car, with the two main characters zipping here and there and meeting this person and that person and then scooting off to another place. To me, that got old. It got old to the point where I finally said, “Who cares who killed this woman?”

Suffice it to say that it’s all right to give up on a fiction book if you are not into the story or the characters.

It is also okay to give up reading fiction or nonfiction if the writing is bad. I cannot think of any books I’ve read recently where the writing was so subpar that I gave up reading. However, one book I finished that I probably should have given up on was John Saul’s Creature, which was horribly predictable. (To Mr. Saul’s credit, he has written several other novels which were much better.)

Was there ever a book which you gave up on?