Ask any reader what their personal policy is on finishing vs. not finishing books and you’ll likely be drawn into a long conversation. As for myself, I don’t have any specific rule (such as a 50-pages-to-hook-me-otherwise-I-put-it-down-rule) concerning giving up on books. Sometimes I’ll set a book down that I thought I was enjoying to eat dinner, forget about it, remember it months later, and never feel compelled to pick it up again. Sometimes I’ll plow through a book I dislike for no discernible reason.

Once I’ve decided to give up on a book, though, I make my decision final: I remove my bookmark. I still have books with bookmarks on my shelf that I haven’t touched in years (no library books, I promise!), but I think I’d like to finish them someday. Maybe.

Below are a several books I’ve given up on throughout the years; none of them have a bookmark in them anymore. Links lead to my comments on Goodreads. (Fair warning: my Goodreads reviews are much more off-the-cuff than my reviews here. No swearing – I think – but certainly blunter. And you get to see how much my reviewing style has evolved over the years, including what old prejudices I held back in 2008 when I first started using Goodreads.) What books have you given up on recently?

A Curse Dark as Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce
I got through most of this book and then just decided I didn’t care enough about the characters to finish. I found the plot quite slow and boring, despite my love for reworked fairy tales. I tried another of Bunce’s books later with the same experience.

Rebel Angels by Libba Bray
I quite liked the first book in this series, A Great and Terrible Beauty. It was a fun bit of historical fantasy with some unique plotting and interesting characterization. By the time I got into the second book, though, I was tired of the characters, who didn’t seem to maintain any continuity from one page to the next. It seemed a bit overblown and disjointed to me, too. I’ve read others by Bray since then and I’ve determined her writing probably just isn’t for me.

Eyes Like Stars by Lisa Mantchev
I’m actually having a hard time remembering what this was even about. My Goodreads review simply reads “Boring. So boring.” That’s about all I can recall of it.

Fairest by Gail Carson Levine
I think Ella Enchanted is the only thing by Levine that I really like. The present tense in Fairest grated on me so badly, and I had problems with the premise from the very beginning.

ttyl by Lauren Myracle
I didn’t have any major problems with this one. I wanted to read if to see what the big deal was (it had just been challenged at my former school district). I read enough of it to get an idea, then turned it back into the library, not feeling compelled to finish.

The Secret Life of Prince Charming by Deb Caletti
I just got bored. It probably wasn’t the book’s fault. I tried to read this back when I still thought I enjoyed a lot of contemporary realistic fiction. Turns out I don’t.

The Maze Runner by James Dashner
Again, I just got bored, although my boredom set in quite early. I don’t think I even got 50 pages before I decided this was not for me. (This is also my pithiest Goodreads review ever.)

I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore
My only real recollection of this is that the writing was so, so bad.

The Iron Thorn by Caitlin Kittredge
This was such a long book and the idea of finishing it made me feel sad. So I didn’t. Apparently one of my pet peeves is when characters aren’t consistent. Growth is great, but when they act like two different people, we have a problem.