Fifty Shades of Grey among Goodreads’ list of most abandoned books

By: Karissa Donkin GTA, Published on Wed Jul 10 2013 Toronto Star

Popular book recommendation website has asked readers about why they abandon books. Most often, it’s because they’re “slow” or “boring.”

   

         

   

A popular book recommendation website has delved into the psychology of abandonment and what makes people keep reading or set a book down before finishing it.

According to stats released on a Goodreads blog post on Tuesday, popular books such as Fifty Shades of Grey E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Greyand J.K. Rowling’s first aduly novel,The Casual Vacancy, are the most commonly abandoned or “unfinished” books.

People may put The Casual Vacancy down, for example, because they have different expectations as it is “a far cry from the Harry Potter series.”

New books aren’t the only ones people tend to start and abandon. Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings are among the most commonly abandoned of classic books.

Most people, Goodreads’ stats say, will “always finish” books they start, with about 38 per cent claiming they don’t abandon books. About 28 per cent of people surveyed will abandon a book about 50 to 100 pages in.

Almost half (46.4 per cent) of readers surveyed say they will put a book down if it’s slow or boring. Another 18.8 per cent will abandon it if they feel it has “weak writing.”

On the contrary, a rule of finishing things (36.6 per cent) and a desire to know what happens (25.2 per cent) will keep Goodreads’ members turning the pages of a book until the end.

Goodreads — which says it has 18 million members — allows people to build lists of books they’ve read or want to read and find new books by sharing lists with friends via social media.