Should I or shouldn't I?

[beelikej]

First addition to my bookpile arrived today; I found a second hand copy of Naked Came The Stranger by Penelope Ashe (1969) - author's name is a pseudonym for a group of -male- journalists who were appalled at the poor writing in the then-current best-sellers, so they decided to have a contest to see who could write the best/worst smut/pulp. Can't wait to read it *grins*

There are more books on the way, but I already updated My readinglist. I now have three books left on the pile (including the one above)

I'm not sure if I want to finish the book I'm currently reading though: Tampa by Alissa Nutting, about a 26 year old woman seducing one of her highschool students.
The main character is such a horrid person. I had hoped for possible unreliable narrator vibe, but she's totally aware of what she's doing yet just doesn't care.
I bought it to prepare for Lolita (on my readlist because of classic status) and I wanted to see a feminine point of view of such a situation. But it's just very crude.
The cover is cool though. So there's that.

What do YOU do when you don't like a book you're reading? Should I continue in the hope it gets better? Or maybe I should consider it a "hateread" -like tanisafan suggested- and just get a kick out of angrily turning the pages in a WTF mode?

Comments

[angelus2hot]

This happened to me with The Serious Game by Hjalmar Söderberg.

It was billed as Sweden's most enduring love story. I was expecting, well not what I got. If I'm to enjoy a book I have to like at least one of the main characters. In this book there was nothing to like, nothing at all in any of the characters to make me want to cheer for them. But I forced myself to continue reading in the hopes it would get better but no such luck. It went from bad to worse.

I did the "hateread" thing with the rest of the Southern Vampire Mysteries(Sookie Stackhouse books) after I read the second one and honestly wished I hadn't. Once you've read it you can't unread.


If you're dying to see how it ends then by all means finish it but honestly if it's that bad already the chances are it's as good as it's going to get.

[beelikej.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing your experiences with disappointing books, I especially needed to be reminded of the "can't be unread" advice.

I don't even have to like a character, but I should at least be fascinated by them or their motivations and I just can't care about this woman, bleech. And typing this I realize that means I also don't care how the story ends. Problem solved!