Hate-reading?
I've been working through my read list and for a while everything was either phenomenal or good enough to entertain.
Then this one. My goodness. I don't like the author. I don't like the narrator. I don't like the other of two characters in the story (so far). I'm piqued by the central mystery, but I can just tell that this is one of those stories where the mystery is going to remain an abstract MacGuffin around which the characters and their flaws are explored. I can't imagine any of this will turn around, but I'm on chapter 3 and about a third of the way through.
So now I'm faced with the choice to finish or abandon. I've been trying to finish it because a friend of mine mentioned having a personal policy of finishing every book she starts, and I am inspired by that. But so far it's just lead to reader's block.
I'm going to get through it, because I'm stubborn, but I don't think I'll enjoy it. Has anyone else ever hate-read a story? What was it? I'm happy to share the one that spawned this thread but only if people want to hear about a book that I've judged in the first third.
(this is all light-hearted, I wouldn't read it if I really hated it that much)
Life is too short and there are way too many amazing novels/shows/movies that I haven't finished yet for me to waste my time powering through one that I'm not at least somewhat enjoying. The only exception to that is if, despite not necessarily being an enjoyable process getting through it, I know that finishing it will ultimately be an enriching/worthwhile/fulfilling/enlightening experience.
The only book I can think of that I legitimately "hate-read" was Atlas Shrugged. I dislike Ayn Rand, and view modern Libertarianism as a selfish, short-sighted, naive, and destructive political ideology. But I wanted to know where they got some of their core beliefs from, so I'm still somewhat glad I read it even though I hated everything about it.
Lol, I came to mention Atlas shrugged as well. I had some extra audible credits (I haven't had time for a while now) and decided to get Atlas Shrugged for similar reasons to you.
Its something like 50 or 60 hours though... so I don't know if I'll get through it if it sucks.
If you're anything like me, prepare to say "oh, for fucks sake!" and "really? give me a break!" out loud several dozen times throughout the experience. The world she constructed is basically a giant strawman argument against the idea of altruism, the main characters are all Mary Sue/Übermensch, self-made heroes/heroines, and all the villains are cartoonishly evil "parasites" with no in betweens. It's genuinely hard to believe that anyone took it seriously, even as an allegorical piece of fiction.
I briefly dated an Objectivist in college, so I read it then, but I still had to skip the 80 page Jon Gault speech.
Pro tip: do not read Any Rand if you're doing group work in college and often carrying the team. It will make you both frustrated and insufferable.
My Atlas Shrugged story is that in high school while looking up scholarships, one required writing a book report on it. I got through something like three chapters before realizing that it wasn’t anywhere near worth the value of the scholarship to spend my time reading it, and completely dismissing Rand’s entire bullshit philosophy.
To be fair it taught me an important lesson: if a position cannot be directly argued for, it isn’t worth listening to. If objectivism actually made sense, Rand wouldn’t have needed to try to hide it behind theatrics.
I only started free reading again as an adult after I gave myself permission for two things: I can read fun fiction, and I never have to finish a book I realize I'm not enjoying. That last one was a bigger deal coming from a mindset that felt like if I didn't finish a book, that was somehow a failure on my part. And in the end I just stopped reading.
So yeah, I'm pro team "put the book down, it may not be for you and you can always come back to it later." I think maybe some brains do well with the "I have to finish everything book I start," but for me it just made me hate reading. And I've finished substantially more books giving myself grace to put a few down along the way. That said I try to give a book 20-50% before I give up, and there were a couple I pushed through hoping in vein they were going to turn it around and catch my attention by the end. But there were also a few I got maybe 4 chapters into and knew pretty quickly it just wasn't a book for me.
So you say you're going to push through, but this internet stranger votes that you should table it for now because you could instead be reading something you really like. There's only so much time you'll get to spend reading in life after all. Why waste more than you need to "fun" reading stuff you don't like?
There are two books I have hate read in my lifetime.
The first was The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald may be a wonderful author, but I hated all of the characters so much. I would have stopped reading a few chapters in if it were not a school assignment.
The second was Maia by Richard Adams. It is the sequel to Shardik, which is my personal all time favorite. It is so incredibly long; it’s something like 800 pages to my memory. And most of it is just plodding along. There’s a political revolution in there somewhere but by the time it happens I had long stopped being interested in the society it happened in. The ideas in the book are also just plain bad. It’s about a young girl who gets sold into slavery by her parents, later becomes a sex slave, and there is a very unnecessary lesbian sex scene. I am a pretty masculine guy, but it was pretty obvious that the author didn’t know much about what it is like to be female, which is a problem because most of the book is from Maia’s perspective! The book basically killed any idea of how good a person I thought the author was.
I have pretty much arrived at the point where I will allow myself to DNF any book I am not enjoying. I even DNFed a three-book series halfway through the last book.
The most useful hate read I ever had was Digital Fortress by Dan Brown. The research is exceedingly bad, the plot is shallow, and his understanding of the tech is laughable.
Spoiler
A critical element of the plot turns on the fact that, in the inner sanctum of the government's most secret digital spy agency, people don't lock their workstations, they just turn down the brightness on the monitor. Not even just, you know, turn the monitor off. But actually dial the brightness down. Totally absurd.
But, I was on a very long drive when I was listening to it, and my annoyance helped keep me awake. So there was that.
I read Digital Fortress in high school and enjoyed it but I do remember it being a bit... out there lol. 2010 me had questions about the likelihood of all that stuff. Deception Point is even more fun.
I let myself DNF the final book in a trilogy somewhat recently. I'm still kind of upset about it but it was just the same plot as the previous two but with elements that were ickier. Not a fan of reusing single-book plots in a short series...
I occasionally hate-read but I try not to make it a habit. It depends how invested I am. Usually, I'll put down a book if it's grating too much. But there have been a couple that I've hate-read!
Recently, I knew somewhere in the first couple of paragraphs that a book would be dubious. It was set in the very small part of the country in which I grew up. This region has a very specific mix of flora, fauna, culture, etc. The author is not from here. She absolutely butchered it. I hate-read it and listed to my friends all the reasons they shouldn't read it. We had a good laugh, but I kind of feel like I took one for the team. People who aren't from here generally enjoy it. I might have enjoyed it if I wasn't from here, but we'll never know.
Then there are other books I just keep reading despite stuff that is mildly annoying because it's about the experience instead of the glowing prose. Not really a hate-read but not the most amazing quality one, either.