Life’s too short to read bad books.

I recently stopped reading a book. I didn’t make it to the end. In fact, I barely made it a third of the way through. I learned this little habit from my mother: if a book doesn’t hook you in the first 100 pages, it’s time to move on. Life is too short to read a book you’re not enjoying.

Not to mention my ever-expanding TBR list means I have no shortage of (likely better) books to read.

I know that for some people, not reading a book the whole way through is bookworm blasphemy. If you’re really a bibliophile, these people say, you will feel compelled to read every last word available to you. And I’ve experienced my share of half-finished-book-guilt. I mean, someone spent how knows how long writing this, and someone thought it was good enough to publish, and enough people liked it for there to be positive blurbs on the cover. Maybe I should give it another chance.

But then the next chapter is no different, and it gets harder to give it that chance.

Apart from my mom’s sage wisdom, I blame graduate school for this. When you spend years and years forcing yourself to read things because you have to, it gets harder to force yourself to read things that you don’t have to. I get major flashbacks when trying to force myself to read something I’m not liking. It’s a pit in my stomach. Yeah, for reals. I get an actual physical reaction to reading a book I don’t enjoy.

Many books have fallen victim to the pit in my stomach. Outlander, for instance. The Namesake. Frankenstein. Books that plenty of other people adore that I just could not get through. And there’s that guilt again, and some book-related self-esteem issues. What’s wrong with me that I couldn’t get into the magic of a masterpiece like Frankenstein?

I’m glad that there is such a wide and wonderful world of books, and an even wider community of readers. Just because I like or don’t like a book doesn’t mean everyone else feels the same. So unless a book is truly bad (*cough* 50 Shades *cough*), I’m trying to allow myself to not feel guilty about it. Someone else can give the book the love it maybe needs. It’s like when I give someone else the pickle that came with my sandwich: just because pickles are icky to me doesn’t mean my friend should be deprived of their happy snack.