Do you often leave books unfinished? Even if you really like what you are reading?

I looked at my bookshelf and found myself ashamed at how many things I never finished. Going to stop buying books until I have finished EVERY FUCKING one of them (not including dictionary/thesaurus, bible, cook books, manuals and anthologies).

all the time frankly

this would mean not buying books for > 1 yr

yes, all the time. mostly no to the second question. doesn't seem like a big deal, there are plenty of books to read.

yes all the time

Well, w/ unemployment I figure I can get 2, maybe 3 if short, novels done a week. obv. crime & punishment/2666/etc. gonna need a week or so to themselves. also i'm poor and really shouldn't be buying anything you can get for free (hello library.)

I try to finish a book if I like it, but if I don't, then pshaw. I think the last book I did this with was rabbit run.

crime and punishment isn't a 'week' book imo, iirc from reading it in the last year.

I thought I didn't do this, but at some points during the book poll I found myself confessing this about every other entry.

i finish <50% of books i start, movies too, fuck it

Combination of library, internet reading, well-stocked shelves & being a sucker for "23 New and Used from £0.01" (=£2.76, but still less than a magazine) means I've become really decadent about not finishing over the last year or two. I'll start something & drop it pretty lightly, or rush through it for a bit of info - there's too much to read, don't want to be diligent if I feel something isn't right for me.

But will persist, obviously, if a book works.

I rarely abandon a book I'm enjoying, but I'm wont to abandon magazine articles (online or off) right at the last paragraph. I have quite enough pithy conclusions in my life, thanks.

Going through my shelf the top floor is where everything is finished, 2nd and 3rd where I haven't got round to yet...and some is unfinished, but that's because I'll pick it up, read a chapter and put it back as I got to finish what I was REALLY reading this or that week - usually something from the library which I have to give back as I promised myself never to pay a late fine ever again.

Often I'll sell things I bought unread, because they seemed a good idea at the time but now don't fit with my current preoccupations.

But unfinished books are so rare: even if I'm not totally getting it I like muddling through with a strong belief that I'll pick up something REALLY IMPORTANT in a later sentence.

So I finish through fear.

So rare that I remember the last three books I didn't finish: Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks and Meltzer's Aesthetics of Rock (they have melded into the same book as I type this post), Patrick White's Riders in the Chariot was the last time a novel defeated me, and Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales of Shakespeare.

I rarely abandon a book I'm enjoying, but I'm wont to abandon magazine articles (online or off) right at the last paragraph. I have quite enough pithy conclusions in my life, thanks.

This.