It’s okay not to finish sometimes

It’s very rare when I don’t finish reading a book. I don’t think I’m a terribly picky reader; I read many genres and many authors. Some books are more enjoyable than others, but I rarely dislike one so much I give up. I usually treat series the same as individual books and will read through the end. I’m a completionist by nature.

But allow me to tell you a story about a series I was determined to continue at the expense of my reading enjoyment, and why I realized it’s okay to leave something unfinished.

At the risk of getting some flak from fellow fantasy authors and readers, the series I’m going to talk about is The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. (I never got far enough into the series to reach the point where Brandon Sanderson took over, so this is really my struggle with Jordan’s portion of the series alone.)

I first started reading the series when I was in high school. At the time, I think only books 1 – 6 were published. I devoured the first two books, and enjoyed the third. I remember thinking book 4 was still pretty good, but then I read book 5. I realized toward the end that the format/template of the book was remarkably similar to book 4. That frustrated me. I put the series aside, but not because of the template. I didn’t have a copy of book 6, and the rest of the series wasn’t available yet. I forgot about the series for years.

Then, in 2020, I was looking for something new to read, and came across a sale of The Wheel of Time bundled set, which included the whole series, along with the prequel. It had been more than 20 years since I’d read books 1 – 5, so I decided to start over from the beginning.

It’s a long series – and most of the books are pretty hefty on their own. That’s typically not a problem; I’ve been reading fantasy for a long time and I’m used to both. So I dove in.

I didn’t enjoy the first 3 books as much as I had as a teenager. Maybe it was because I remembered so much of the plot, or maybe it was a change in perspective due to age. I don’t know. I still liked them, but not as much as I once did. I read through the prequel and the first 5 books pretty quickly, then hit book 6.

I have three words to say about book 6: Longest. Prologue. Ever. I’m not sure the official page count since I was reading on my Nook, but the ebook was over 80 pages. That’s novella length—in a prologue. I soldiered through it and finally got to the main body of the book. That’s really where things began to stagnate for me.

I’m usually able to read a book of that length in 2-3 weeks, tops. This one dragged on for almost 3 months. I was losing interest in the story, I disliked a significant proportion of the characters, and it was increasingly difficult for me to want to read. But I am nothing if not stubborn, and I was determined to finish the series. I will admit, the ending of book 6 had some excitement, but I had to slog through a lot before I reached that point.

Book 7 proved even more difficult. I’d read for 5-10 minutes and seek something else to do for the remainder of my lunchbreaks. The series wasn’t clicking for me any longer, but I really wanted to finish it. I’d heard good things about the books Sanderson wrote, but I needed to get to that point first. Could I push through to that point?

Short answer: No.

After 4 months of barely reading at all, I realized that forcing myself to continue was not going to make me like the books. If anything, it made me less inclined to do so. I hate to admit defeat, but in this case, reading had become a chore. I needed a change of pace for my own sanity.

That was April 2021, and I was about 65% of the way through book 7. Will I eventually return to The Wheel of Time to finish it? Probably not. I don’t think that series is for me.

But what I learned through that experience is that it’s okay to set something aside if it’s not working for you. It’s okay to leave a book or series unfinished. Reading enjoyment is subjective, and while I like a variety of books and authors, there are bound to be some I don’t. And that’s okay.