question
A question for you, noble blog-readers.

I've been reading a 900 page book, which will remain nameless, and I gave up about 200 pages in. The book's main three POV characters were all women of differing ages, and they got on my nerves. All three of them were special and wonderful, and just oh-so-oppressed by the nasty fearful men in their lives. Now, I don't have any objection to the women-constrained-by-their-boorish-menfolk plot (that was, after all, essentially the plot of Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon). The difference is that The Mists of Avalon's characters were men and women of flesh and blood, while the POV characters in the nameless book came across as Mary Sues.*

So I set that aside, and instead read John Scalzi's The Last Colony, which was great fun, and delightfully free of caricatures.

The thing is, I never used to do this. I still think you can't form a reasoned opinion about a book unless you've read the entire thing.** So I always used to read books beginning to end, even if I didn't like them. Now, though, I simply don't want to bother with a book that's not enjoyable, or intellectually engaging, or excessively preachy. Time constraints play a big part in that. Or perhaps I've gotten older, or incrementally wiser.***

So what do you do, oh blog readers? If you're reading a book and it's not doing it for you, do you plow through to the end? Or do you set it aside and read something else?

-JM

*Or, to put it more bluntly, The Mists of Avalon was good, while this other book was not.

**Unless you're a slush reader.

***In this case, wise = cognizant of one's own stupidity.