Finishing a book that I started was a “rule” of mine for more than half my life.  If you had asked me, I wouldn’t have said it was a rule, but that must have been what it looked like from the outside.  My three copies of Ulysses are a case in point.  Ever since my college years, I have thought I should read it but could never make it more than a couple of pages.  Then I would forget I ever had a copy and eventually buy a new one. 

At some point I read some place that so many books are published each year that even if you read a book a day, you would never get to all of them.  That’s when I did make a rule for myself – if I’m not enjoying the reading, I quit and move onto the next book.  I can be ruthless about this; more than once I have dumped a book after just a few pages. 

Today I am returning a book to the library that I have not finished.  It’s a Maggie O’Farrell, an author who I normally adore.  Every one of her books that I’ve read has earned 5 stars.  But yesterday, while listening to it on CD in the car, she broke one of my rules… the dog died.  When it happened I turned off the CD immediately to think about it.  That’s when I realized that even though I was about 1/3 of the way through the book, I hadn’t really connected to any of the characters and wasn’t enjoying it.  When I got home I looked up the summary online and found that continuing was probably not going to be enjoyable to me.  That made me ponder my reading rules.  I’ve never written these down before, in fact have never really thought of them as a list before, but here things that can put me off:

The dog dying (specially if the dog is killed)

Children dying (same caveat as the dog…)

Torture/rape (I quit Rob Roy because of this)

Graphic violence (Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy went back to the library quickly)

Child abuse (a fairly long string of abandoned books for this rule – Demon Copperfield, Swamplandia, Where the Crawdads Sing….)

Vapidness.  This probably seems a silly rule, but if the main characters are all shallow and full of themselves, I don’t see a finished book in my future.  (These tend to get rejected very quickly so I can’t even think of a title!)

I realize that these are all negative rules.  I’ve been pondering if I have any positive reading rules; the only thing I can come up with is things that draw me to books and that list is way too long to put here.  Suffice it say that the list would start with dragons and fairies!

Do you have any reading rules?  What draws you to a book?