Top 10 Reasons to Finish a Book You Hate

You hate the book, but you keep reading and reading.
You must make it through to the end. Why do you do that?

Aaron Wong (Don’t know Aaron? Neither do I. I’m afraid I am just fishing the blogosphere for my own blog material.) wrote a top 10 list of reasons to take a job you hate. I particularly like this reason: “The people you work with could make the job tolerable.” That’s me, hoping to find that tolerable job. In the current employment climate and being close to broke, I might stick with a job that is somewhere below tolerable, but I have a more interesting question for writers or readers. What are 10 reasons to finish a book you hate?

I am sure I am not the only one that has slogged through a book I did not like. (I’ve even slogged through a few that I’ve enjoyed.) Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code would be one that I finished but didn’t like at all. It was a fairly quick read, so not too high on the painful scale. What was a more protracted, painful read? I can’t think of one, but that might be because I blocked the memory out. I certainly have some phantom memories of long, painful books that I saw through to the end. Can you think of a book that you hated the moment you began reading but went ahead and finished it?

Here is my spin on Aaron’s list: 10 reasons to finish a book you hate.

1. You might hate it now, but it could end up liking it in the end. It could just be an “acquired taste,” like eating dirt would be for a hermit.
2. You’ll obtain a skill set you never imagined—intellectual turpitude.
3. It’s a great way to expand your world view by accepting and appreciating wretched prose.
4. Get you book reading club to read it, too, and they might make it tolerable—in a MSTK 3000 sort of way.
5. With a high unemployment rate, you might not have much of a choice. (No money, no new books.)
6. Reading a book you hate could be OK if it’s text book you’re reading because you went back to school as an easy way to get a loan for $100,000 with no job.
7. What doesn’t kill you, but might turns you into a human potato, makes you stronger.
8. If it gets really bad, you can just quit reading it. Quitter.
9. You could always call it an “experience” and chalk it up to your ability to stick with a bad decision for an extended period of time.
10. You will learn more about yourself than you could ever imagine. This is good, because by the time you’re done reading a book you hate, you will have severely stunted your imagination.

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