Leaving books unfinished when you don't like them

Oh honey, absolutely not. If someone has taken the laborious hard task of writing a book then I feel it's not too much to ask to be considerate and to read what they have to say... and that's why I aways make my assistant read them to the very end... Even if it doesn't look like I'm listening. I may be multi-tasking by catching up on my beauty sleep at the same time, (despite appearing like I've passed out after lunchtime drinks).

Obviously I can't read everything and I'm only interested in books that will advance me. I mean, I read Becoming Michele Obama in 2018 but then I had a strong letter from her lawyers insisting that I stop claiming to be her, signing checks in her name and saying I was her to get VIP stuff like free cars and state visits, so it was all a big waste of money and time. I won't be falling for her second book, The Light We Carry as I'm told my mobile phone already has an inbuilt torch. She's just a clever con woman, but as you can see I'm much smarter than her!

A movie I don't enjoy is just a few hours. A book can take weeks or even months. Screw that. Same with television shows. You better hook me early, because I'm not sticking around for three seasons or two hundred pages for things to "get good."

May be sacrilege and an indicator that some other spectrum is ruling my life ( because of the "time is a precious commodity" has become my mantra  ) and I may need to rebel myself in that regard but I just can't devote time to a book I know I'm not interested anymore and contrary to music or movies, the style can turn me off to the point of simply abort the mission ( same goes to TV Series, which I have far, far less tolerance ), worth mentioning I wasn't that way 5 years ago.

Is not always the same situation, a couple of examples, Proust and Search of Lost Time, read two of them until I felt I need to turn at least 40 to fully invest myself in its odyssey. And just a few weeks ago Oates' Blonde, 300 pages was enough, it was intriguing at first but quickly reveals all its tricks and over the couse of those pages never became more than one note.

I’m a compulsive completionist so I basically never do this, though I really wish I could. Same with movies.

It’s only just recently that I’ve even gotten into the habit of completely dropping TV shows that feel like a waste of time right out the gate. Sorry, For All Mankind!

I think I’ve only deliberately bailed a couple times (most recently with an Indiana Jones novel that I tried reading last year), but I’m pretty selective about what I choose to read since it’s a bigger time commitment than watching a movie, so it’s extremely rare that I’m not invested in whatever I’m reading.

When I was younger, what would happen more often is me not finishing a book because I got too busy or something, and so much time went by without picking it up that I would forget what I read, and I just didn’t feel like going back and rereading, so the book would just get forgotten about. It’s not that I wasn’t enjoying it... life just got in the way for some reason. This has happened with Moby Dick, Robinson Crusoe, This Side of Paradise, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King... books that I still haven't finished to this day. But that was in like middle school, and now I almost always finish books that I start.