Tolerating books

I read a lot of books, but some books are harder to finish than others. Some books just lose my interest, some have poor organization or insufficient writing, and some books have issues too controversial for me to swallow. (Just as I refuse to keep watching a movie where a child is brutally murdered, I refuse to read or even keep a book that includes things like a graphic rape scene). There has only been one book I ended up throwing across the room. It was a story called Friedrich. I read it in middle school. I was outraged that, at the end of the story, the main character had been murdered, all because he was Jewish. I knew it was a story about Nazi Germany. I knew that it would have bad things done to the Jews in it. But to actually have something like THAT in the story, a little boy murdered, was just too much for me. I was outraged!!

For the most part, I like to read nonfiction. I'm a history junkie, so I have a lot of biographies and books about historical events. There's just so much stuff out there that I want to learn about. So much I want to read about. So I'm definitely one to buy a nonfiction book faster than a novel.

All the same, some nonfiction books are not all that great. The main issue I have with nonfiction books is how they are organized. If it's poorly put together, then it's hard to enjoy. If I have a hard time finding the information I need in such a book, then that's a downside, too.

One book I am reading right now, though, has one problem: It keeps repeating what was said in an earlier chapter. People introduced earlier in the book with a brief introduction reappear carrying those very same kind of descriptions or comments said about them. It's very irritating and it looks lazy on the author's part. Like he didn't take the time to dig up OTHER material about these people. Sure, what he uses as descriptors are interesting and novel, but the novelty dies pretty fast if those same words pop up again later in the book.

I'm also seeing errors. Like, in an early chapter, it said someone was on MTV. In a later chapter, though, it's revealed that she WASN'T on MTV. And I'm sitting there wondering WHY the heck they said she WAS on MTV earlier in the book when she wasn't. They sort of neglected to include that little detail.

I try to read every book I start until the very end. Sometimes, though, I will stop reading if a book is really irritating, too confusing, if the story is too unbelievable or has characters with an encyclopedic listing of descriptions attached to them, or if it has stuff in it I just don't feel comfortable reading about. It's not just that I don't want that stuff in my head or I don't want to be influenced with that kinda bad stuff it talks about, but more than anything, putting up with a bad book seems to be a waste of time. There's a bazillion other books out there to read, and not enough time to read them all. It's not like I HAVE to read bad books for, like, a homework assignment, or something, so maybe I shouldn't feel all that bad in wanting to stop reading the books I just can't tolerate.