Question: when you are going to skip the end of a book to find out what happens because you don’t care to read the whole thing, where do you skip to?
Do you jump to the last chapter, or the penultimate chapter?
Susan: Usually the third chapter from the end – enough that I have context, but not so far that I’m picking up all the stuff I was trying to skip.
Carrie: Usually the last chapter – but it depends on why I’m skipping. If it’s an anxiety issue, and I need to know if there’s a HEA, I skip to the last page and go backwards from there until I know if everyone is OK.
If I’m mildly interested in what happens but not enough to give the book a lot of time, I skim the whole thing, I’m an excellent skimmer.
Catherine: What Carrie said! Though certain authors have been known to DECEIVE ME with their last pages, Connie Willis…
Carrie: That Connie is a tricksie devil!
Sneezy: When I do it, it’s usually because of anxiety, ADHD, time, or some combination of them. If whatever is happening in the story has my anxiety up, *even if I know everything will be okay*, or my brain is just going, “But I want the happy juice NEEAAAAOW,” I skip to the final pages.
I also do that if I’m already in the Bad Decisions Book Club, and I’m trying to find a big button to smack for the happy juice so I ACTUALLY sleep when I lie down.
Doesn’t always work but, eh.
Catherine: Not to mention reading ahead to get to the sexy bits. Please tell me I’m not the only one who does that. (Sometimes the slow burn is too slow. Sometimes the fast burn is too slow too…)
Susan: The placement of sexy bits in romance novels STRESSES ME OUT.
If there’s a sex scene after chapter two but before the middle, I’m just like “… Shit, there’s going to be SOMETHING BAD to keep the tension going.”
Tara: I get so much shit for skipping ahead, which is frustrating because I’m always clear that it’s for anxiety management reasons. It’s not sacrilege to read ahead.
Sarah: Who TF would give you shit about skipping ahead?! UGH.
Claudia: I usually skim if I’m bored — the difference in my head is that if I’m reeeaaaally bored I will skip to the last chapter or epilogue just to see how the story ended. Skimming for me is different than skipping because I usually will read the first few sentences of a paragraph and only skip a few paragraphs at a time if it comes to that, usually if it’s too much description to my taste and/or is repetitive.
Tara: I’ve talked about it on my old podcast and my current one, and both times it was listeners, authors, etc. People were horrified.
Sarah: That is hot garbage. I’m sorry they bothered you about it at all!
Tara: Thank you! I just tell them flat out that I won’t apologize for my anxiety management practices and mysteriously never hear anything again…
Sarah: I am baffled that someone would feel it is their job to manage how someone else reads a book. What the absolute hell.
Tara: I’ve literally had authors ask me to review their books, but say that I can’t skip to the end.
Shana: That’s some bullshit.
Skipping to the end of the book, or reading the movie plot before you watch it…these are time honored traditions. Why wouldn’t an author want someone to enjoy their book? Instead of being miserable the whole time.
Kiki: I skip for anxiety reasons as well sometimes and it turns out I’m much better able to enjoy a book when I’m not also trying to calm down my nervous system about what may or may not be coming!
Maya: Seriously. don’t tell me how to get to the HEA.
Tara: I agreed exactly once and there was a moment so angsty that I felt hungover for three days. Never, ever again.
Maya: But also, the best books — the books I love with all my heart — I’ve read so many times I can basically recite them from memory. Knowing how it ends has nothing to do with my enjoyment.
Tara: People get weirdly precious about how to read or anything about books. You want to write in a book? Dog-ear it? I literally don’t care, because if that gets someone to read who wouldn’t otherwise, that’s great! I mean, don’t dog-ear or write in someone else’s book, but do what you want with your own!
Maya: Yeah, for me it’s like, if you love books and reading, then wouldn’t you want as many other people there with you enjoying as many stories as possible? However they can get there?
Catherine: I’m also the sort of person who cheerfully seeks out spoilers and others’ spoilery conversations about books, because sometimes it’s fun to go into a book with that context.
But as many others have said, it’s often very much about anxiety. There are books that I certainly would not have finished if I hadn’t been able to flip forward to see how it ends. And there is also flipping forward to see how long this scary/tense bit will last – sometimes just knowing that it’s only going to be for another twenty pages means I can keep reading rather than giving up on the book.
What about you? Do you skip ahead? If so, do you aim for a specific chapter or point in a book?
I’m a skipper. Always have been. If I’m not feeling a book by chapter 3, I’ll usually head to the penultimate chapter and finish the rest. I guess technically I didn’t dnf it.
I’m fascinated by all these comments because I never skip ahead. Apparently I’m an outlier!
I do DNF pretty liberally, though.
I used to be very straightlaced about reading books from cover to cover (yes, including all the paratexts!). University broke me, there’s just no way to read everything. Having taught myself to skim, I naturally started to pass over “the boring parts” in novels as well. Boring btw depends a lot! I still skip very rarely, mostly AS a last resort with a book I don’t care to finish (Mists of Avalon, my very first DNF!) but still have to know the end (penultimate chapter usually works).
I always read the last pages of a book first. And look up plots for movies before I watch them. I’m definitely able to enjoy a book or movie more that way. It totally is an anxiety issue (I don’t need to worry about encountering something triggering/ beloved characters surviving/bad shit not getting resolved etc) and people who judge people for that can GTFO!
I’m not a skipper. I sometimes in print books (how I love Kindle) flick to the back to see what the page number is on the end (to gauge ‘how long to go’ often done in a non fiction book where like the back 25% is notes/index but also seem to do it for fiction don’t ask how it helps especially if I can judge by the thickness to the backcover!) and I get annoyed at myself if I see something on the final page/pages because its like pricking a balloon! So if I’m enjoying I don’t skip to the end…if I’m not enjoying I either abandoned, look up a wiki summary or plow on.
However I am a massive skimmer. Currently skim reading the History of the world in 500 train journeys as I thought it would be more integrated history but instead it is giant listicle.
And I forgot my “question”.
If one skips to the end …can you say you have read the book for Goodreads (or any other book) Challenge purposes? I think another reason I skim because I feel less like I’m “cheating” to say I read it…Especially if I have downed quite a bit in the book already its like sunk cost fallacy. (If I bail out at chapter 3 coz its crap thats not much time spent and I don’t mind I don’t get to count it as a read lol)
I did count one book as read on Goodreads when I didn’t actually finish it…Clarissa. I read Two volumes. That counts. that REALLY REALLY counts as finishing it….no guilt there lol.
If a character has been imprisoned or is in a really bad situation, I will skip to the point of escape to ensure escape actually happens. After that, I will either skim the imprisoned parts or just start reading at the escape.
After a major horrifying read by James Patterson, whose work I will never read ever, EVER again, I won’t knowingly read any book whose main plot is somebody imprisoned.
I rarely skip ahead: I find the journey to the HEA is just as important as the ending. Because I like angsty romances, I’m usually very invested in how a tortuous emotional situation will be resolved—and I really appreciate a writer who can bring and then carefully resolve the emotional conflict. On the other hand, I have no problem skimming scenes that come across as “filler”—just there to bulk up the page count or set up the next couple’s book—and, I may have to turn in my Romancelandia credentials for admitting this, but sometimes that skimming includes sex scenes.
I don’t skip or skim. If something’s not grabbing me by a certain point or turns me off for some reason then it’s just a DNF, I’m not going to invest more reading time to see if it gets better down the line. If I enjoy the book, then I don’t need to know how it ends until I get there. I think reading romance has actually kind of helped me here: I know, going in, that one way or another there will be a HEA (and if there isn’t…oooh heck no.) There’s a security in reading romance that doesn’t carry over to other genres. But yeah, never had a need to skip.
I had a professor once who said that every book he picked up, he would read the first page and the last page and only get it if he couldn’t figure out how the author got from A to B. It didn’t make sense to me, but to each their own.
I’ll skip to the end if a book isn’t really pulling me in to find out if the ending is going to be worth it. Sometimes I decide yes, sometimes I decide no. The problem, honestly, is how many books I read on my Kindle. With a paper book, flipping is no problem, but I hate doing it on my Kindle, so I reserve it for more extreme cases. (Also hate my kindle for times when I want to page back to see what year we’re in/who a character that’s briefly introduced is, etc.)
I’m one of those people who rarely has a problem with spoilers, especially in romance. The whole point of the genre is that we have an Agreement that everything is going to work out. (Mildly related: that Agreement is what made me so angry about the ending of Loki. They were telling a romance right up until the very end when they made key plot decisions in service to the MCU and killed the character and narrative arc they’d built. I was SO. MAD.)
“If one skips to the end …can you say you have read the book for Goodreads (or any other book) Challenge purposes?”
I promise I mean no disrespect, but… isn’t that a bit pointless? I mean, you’re absolutely allowed to skip, or skim, or read a book however else you like to.
But counting a book as a book you’ve read when you didn’t read more than a portion of it… I dunno. If reading only a portion of a book counts as reading it, then couldn’t you read just two pages and say that it still counts? I mean, reading challenges are just for fun, so if you end up, say, only reading twenty books start-to-finish when your goal is fifty, then doesn’t it make just as much sense to simply change the goal to twenty books?
I’m not judging anybody, just to be clear. I guess I just don’t see the point of fudging the numbers for something like a reading challenge, you know? If you fail, then you fail, but that’s fine, you know? 🙂 It’s for fun!
Sometimes I skip sex scenes. They’re all kind of the same after a while.
When I was a kid, I used to do this all the time. I got burned by so many books where the heroine received some sort of comeuppance about behaving badly. I guess that’s where my love of antiheroes began. I’d also often skip to the gay scenes or the sex scenes, to make sure they were worth my while, back when many books were very oblique about these things, despite a promising cover or blurb.
I don’t now. Mainly because as a middle-aged person I’ve read so many books, I almost always know what’s going to happen at the end, and how, and I’m pleasantly surprised if it takes me by surprise.
Really depends on the book…but generally I hate not finishing a book…so I skim all the way to the end, just enough to get the plot points and have the satisfaction of finishing.
When I took it upon myself to try War and Peace, totally ended up reading all the “peace” parts and skipping the “war” parts
If a book isn’t grabbing me I’ll do the skip to the third to last chapter and see if the end looks to be worth the journey- excited to see that’s other folks’ sweet spot too! I happily spoiler everything so no reason to not spoiler books, too- I don’t need to be surprised to enjoy something. (I also don’t read suspense, lol, I’m here for predictability or funny surprises, thank you very much)
Love this post, and that this is up for a discussion. One of the ways I know I’ve found my people!
I skim if Im reading a romance with a definite HEA but it’s not quite good enough for me to want to savor the journey. Or sometimes if I’m doubting the HEA. Or if it’s 2 a.m. and I have work the next day…but in those cases I’ll go back to where I skimmed from. Mostly I find I get bored and want to skim if there’s lots of external conflict I’m not invested in. Usually this is in historicals, often involving all sorts of anachronistic adventures…
With mysteries with romantic elements, I almost always skip to the last few pages then skim. Only exception to that rule is when I have full faith in that the author respects certain conventions and the H and h at least get a HFN. I’ve been burned before.
I think I’ve exhibited every one of the behaviors listed above at some point. Skip, skim, read the last chapter, read backwards from the last chapter. I tend to avoid anything gruesome these days, but when I still read thrillers, I usually skipped stuff from the killer POV. Especially if they were a stalker/serial killer. Yuck. I don’t care how well-written it is, I don’t need it in my brain. Then I felt like that became the point of most thrillers and stopped reading them entirely.
Nowadays, I probably DNF more than any of the above, but maybe I need to embrace skimming or skipping again b/c I do tend to angst over DNFing (is it going to get better? have I given it enough of a chance?) and honestly skimming and skipping around does to tend to absolve me of that guilt by showing me “yeah, this book is not for me.” Very rarely has my gut been wrong about that once I do peek.
I generally don’t skip ahead with mysteries b/c I want to be surprised by the ending. I spoiled an Agatha Christie that way (and I only read like the last paragraph!) and I’ve never completely forgiven myself 😉 However, I will admit, when the mystery is poorly written and the culprit is obvious I will read the last chapter so I can just be done with it. I have to both be 1) not enjoying the book 2) be 90% sure I know who the killer. There have plenty of mysteries where I enjoy the story enough to keep going even though the ending isn’t a surprise.
I won’t count anything I skip or skim as having read it in my personal spreadsheet and I generally won’t talk about it for Whatcha Reading (unless it has something that absolutely is so ridiculous or infuriating that I can’t help but share).
I rarely skip ahead. I don’t read a lot of fiction that I’m significantly unsure whether I’ll like it, and if things get really meh I’ll just DNF. And I definitely wouldn’t skip for sex scenes because I tend to get bored of them really fast. I’m more likely to skip them outright, or DNF because of them. (I had one good one come along in a book recently, but it was late in the book, just the one (good or bad), so I had no expectation there’d be more to skip for.)
I generally don’t want to be spoiled for most things; I wouldn’t have much interest in continuing to enjoy fiction if I couldn’t stand to let the story unfold as it’s intended.
HOWEVER. I was reading Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M.T. Anderson in like 2017, maybe; it’s told chronologically and I was doing what I do with nonfiction that I find a little dense, a little depressing (YMMV) and reading it bit by bit. But by the time I got to the chillingly titled chapter “Everything is getting merrier” I was, hmmm, equally un-merry. DNF or skip, so I skipped and ended up reading a good hunk of the rest of the book chapter by out of order chapter. It was weird, bit it worked! I read and reread and skipped to before or after any given point. I’m not sure I *technically* finished the book, but I found what I read so impactful and insightful that I can genuinely say that I really, really liked the book and even recommend it. (Though, probably obviously given the subject matter, content warnings abound.) I have it on the shelf, so if I ever want to fill in the missing pieces I can.
I will skip ahead to make sure that bad situations resolve well, for my anxiety. If I decide to not finish a book, but want to make sure the characters survive, I’ll read the last few pages. Not going to bother with the last few chapters of something I don’t find worth my reading time. I often skim sex scenes.
I occasionally skip ahead for anxiety/to not stay up late. I sometimes skip ahead to sex scenes, too (you’re not alone, Catherine). Sometimes it’s too much angst; other times because they can make or break a book and I’m on the fence about DNFing.
Tara, I’m sorry people had the nerve. It’s your brain and your life. You do you, boo.
I find it easier to skim rather than skip, and I’m more likely not to finish if the book isn’t holding my attention.
I think people’s judgement about skipping, skimming, and not finishing is a combination of jealousy and failure of imagination. You’re just living your life, but alas, that in and of itself is devastatingly revolutionary to so many people. They’ve had to endure unpleasant books in their entirety in order to receive praise for school, and even when that structure is gone the scaffolding of it can remain. If one doesn’t have to follow certain rules in order to deserve credit, then their painstaking obedience…serves no purpose?! How dare you? This undermines all the virtue of their leisure activity! They can’t win the competition of reading the best/most/hardest if you’re just …doing …what. you. want? Have they been doing it wrong all this time? Was it not necessary? But they’ve been so good at it!
If that’s a possibility, just reading -or not- purely for pleasure, if that’s been a possibility all along… It’s too radical a dismantling of a comforting mental cage, when they thought they were free. They have to accept that either they don’t want to read just for fun, or that they (and they’re smart! they’ve read so much!) never realized they weren’t doing exactly what they wanted, or… that you’re doing it all wrong! Cue policing.
When I was younger I would never skim or DNF. But there are soooo many books and not enough time. I thank every smart bitch for helping me to figure out which ones are worth my time. I will definitely skim to the end if I’m curious but bored with the protagonists or situation etc. I don’t have “read the end first” anxiety but one of my besties does and at first I was shocked because she was an avid reader and I couldn’t imagine wanting to do that. But it works for her and I will support however reading works for readers 😀 My mind has wandered into Seussian territory – I would read it on a boat, I would read it with a stoat…
Working for the library has made me even more of a vociferous defender of the right to read what you want, how you want. So many women have been shamed for reading romance that some of them will practically duck and slide to the reference desk and say very quietly I’m looking for (insert any) romance. Oh girl!! I got you!! And point them to amazing books and the glory of SBTB. I don’t get all the judgment some people insist on flinging about. Reading is good. And as I always say (and it is embedded in family lore now) don’t yuck somebody’s yum (insert appropriate caveats).
I will sometimes skip to a later chapter if I”m bored / not sure I’m into the book, or at least (with a print book) flip through the later chapters to make sure it’s going in a general direction I like, or that a character I like still appears.
I do have some thoughts about people who get mad at others for skipping ahead. I do not care one single fig about spoilers but I know someone who is an obsessive spoiler-avoider. He hasn’t been able to see the new spiderman movie yet because of theatre closures where we are and he has been avoiding the internet entirely because he considers vague things (like “there is a twist” or “someone dies”) to be massive spoilers. He says if he knows something like that he spends the entire movie waiting for the twist/character death and can’t focus on enjoying what’s actually happening on screen. He’s not a big reader but I could imagine a reader with a similar approach being horrified at the idea of anyone reading ahead.
In terms of authors, I also think that when it’s your own work you might overestimate the impact of your big twist/mystery/shocking moment. There are some truly dramatic turns in fiction that I’m glad weren’t spoiled for me, or I didn’t come across in reading ahead, but it’s not that big a number.
I skip for anxiety sometimes (is this heroine going to get raped..? is this little girl going to be molested..? DID THE DOG MAKE IT OR NOT?) but not so much in romance. Romance feels a lot safer than other genres.
I don’t skip-skip, but if I’m picking up a new book (in physical book form, not an ebook) I open to the middle and read a few pages to get a feel for the story-telling style. Style tends to be my biggest reason for DNFs so I want to try before I buy. I don’t count that as spoiling because I literally do not know the plot or characters well enough to understand the scene I’m reading–which is exactly why it works as a style-test.
I almost never skip to the end; if I’m not feeling the book but think I’ll be interested later I’ll put it down so I can read it all the way through, and if I don’t care enough I just DNF.
I’ve skipped forward twice to my memory (no guarantees from grade school or such). Once was a mystery in which I hated absolutely everything from style to characters to plot-hook but was pretty sure I had figured out the Whodunnit immediately; I skipped to cheat and see if I was right. (I was, and that’s not a testament to my deduction skills.) The other was billed as a romantic thriller but had the pace and logic of a toddler trying to hack a main frame; skipped to see the sex scenes. They were…fine, I guess, but not worth reading up to. Aside from my skip-aheads, they were DNFs. I won’t name names.
I won’t say I don’t understand the shock, but I do find it to be an extremely silly position. If someone doesn’t admit to skipping ahead you’d never know they did, and whether they did or not it doesn’t affect how you read…and if you’re an author, I’m sorry, but your work is now out of your hands and you no longer control it. No amount of shock or horror will make a difference.
@kkw One other reason why people get annoyed at those who habitually skip and skim (and look at their phones while “watching” tv) is the common enough, if not inevitable (in places other than this site), dumb questions and poorly formed opinions that make it clear they didn’t really give the thing a fair shot or much focus.
Everything else you said is also true. But for me, if you’re gonna barely read or hardly pay attention you don’t have much space to complain about certain things (like a lack of tension, or that a scene you weren’t looking at was unclear to you, or that a character’s actions didn’t make sense.) So while I have skipped and skimmed here and there, I am also on the anti side sometimes, too. It depends on how people are talking about the thing.
I read so ridiculously fast that my time investment in any given book is pretty low, so I only DNF if I’ve gotten to 20% or so and I’m still not interested in any of the characters or in the plot.
I’ll skim a book I’ve already read before to get to the parts I especially like, or if I’m only reading it again at a particular time because I picked it up on sale (typically many years after divesting the hard copy (so many dead tree books gone from the collection)).
I’ll also skim if there’s too much repetitive internal monologue/characters doing the same stupid shit over and over and I want to get to the part where things actually start Happening. Internal monologue is not ipso facto a problem, but when characters keep ruminating about the same issues without changing their behavior or otherwise evolving I’m like, let’s move on. Time’s a-wasting. Grow TF up. 🙂
OMG THANK YOU!! Everyone I know thinks I am a weirdo because I read the end of books and also read the plot and ending of movies before I see them. I honestly cannot enjoy books or movies without knowing what happens. Definitely an anxiety thing. Thank you for letting me know that I am not alone!
I skipped to the end of fifty shades! I felt at the time I had to read it (every one else at work had) but was so bored/horrified by Grey and the terrible writing that I couldn’t continue ploughing through it. The only good thing is the charity shop got some money from me buying it and that is where it ended up.
Used to skip physical books more just to see if the ending was happy/hopeful/satisfactory but not so much with ebooks. I think author’s are more aware of trigger warnings, so there isn’t much need.
I found myself doing this too often. I have been successful in curbing the practice. I usually do it now if the angst is getting too repetitive or I am loosing interest. There was one book where skimming and read the ending didn’t help at all, I DNF. Sigh
I rarely skip to the end BUT I was reading a trilogy the other day -and about 25% of the way through the last book – I HAD to skip to the end. I wanted to make sure I hadn’t read all three books just to get a tear jerker ending. Everything WAS okay -and I didn’t spoil the ‘how’ the author made it work. I felt much better enjoying the rest of the book knowing everything was going to be okay.
And yeah -sometimes I skip to the sexy bits –especially if that is why I picked up the book. (You know there are times when you just WANT to get to those bits.)
Hardly ever. Once in a blue moon I will check to make sure things turn out okay in the end.
I will DNF if I’m bored or it’s not for me at or before 25%. If I made it halfway, I will skip to the 3rd last chapter and read from there. Most times I don’t go back to the skipped section.
And I don’t care about spoilers, so reading ahead is fine. I also read plot synopsis pages for tv shows, especially if I’m watching with my kid, so I can tell her ahead of time if a MC will get hurt (or dead )… I started doing that when she was getting anxious watching the Avatar tv show. It works for us.
I skim and skip when I’m bored with the story but still interested enough to see how the couple reaches the HEA. I also love spoilers, I read any review I can get my hands on and listen to synopses on podcasts when they are available. They never ruin a story for me because I still get to see how the events occurred and how the couple fell in love in the voice of the author. I just prefer to be fully informed before I immerse myself in a book.
I’m a skimmer. Usually scenes that are boring me, but don’t seem important. (Tends to be sex scenes, when I end up caring more about the plot than the characters.)
If I’m bored enough to skip to the end, I usually don’t care enough how it ends to bother and just DNF.
Have occasionally googled plot summaries popular books when I realized early that they weren’t for me, but was somewhat curious what happened.
I never read the ending first, never skip, always read series in order. I occasionally skim if the text is tedious but the plot interesting. I have learned to DNF and I try not to pick up books likely to cause anxiety, so it was goodbye long ago to V.I. Warshawski and serial killer mysteries. These are not, as someone else mentioned, typical problems in romanceland.
It never occurred to me to read an ending to mitigate anxiety and I think it is a very clever method of enjoying a book just at the edge of comfort. And yeah, Do Not Hurt the Dog!
If I’m bored I’ll skip a few paragraphs, and if I’m stressed about a scene I skip ahead to make sure it’s okay (usually, are they going to get caught doing whatever thing they’re doing) and then go back and read it. It’s hard for me to enjoy something if I’m worried that they forgot to lock the door. If I’m DNFing something I don’t care about the end in general – I’ll look up thrillers’ endings sometimes because they’re less predictable. I think I care about controlling what I spoil for myself rather than never reading spoilers – I don’t like having things accidentally spoiled but sometimes I need to make sure a movie isn’t going to be too depressing or violent. Sometimes, though, at the end of a chapter an author has a last line that’s a new paragraph and has a twist or revelation and my eyes jump ahead over the paragraphs in front of it and I get annoyed at myself for skipping, lol.
Connie Willis is NOT to be trifled with – she will gut you, usually in the next-to-last chapter – so you need to keep your wits about you.
And what @LML said: Do Not Hurt the Dog!
I have been known to skim, especially with books that are formulaic. Or if I’ve made the BAD mistake of bingeing an author, and that’s on me. Other than that, I usually read in-depth… or I simply DNF.
Btw – on the other topic mentioned, Reading in Order, I have done that a lot but it’s not deliberate. I’m coming to these genres rather late and usually by accident – I read Kleypas all the hell out of order because I don’t even remember how I got there, let alone the order – but I’m glad I did. Read the Wallflowers sort of … not quite backwards.. but I …oh! I know… Sebastian and Evie were long-married way before I got to Wallflowers. I thought it would hurt the story but it didn’t. In fact, I enjoyed it more, knowing how fabulous their marriage was, how it had stood the test of time, etc. Ditto Laurenston’s shifter books – I loved knowing they’d settled into ‘normal’ marriage/mating scenarios, then going back and reading the scorching-hot courtship/sexybits that started it all.
When I check the ending, I usually go to the penultimate chapter, because things should be reasonably settled by then, but not necessarily into the HEA. My biggest reason for checking that point is to make sure there isn’t a Big Misunderstanding because there is nothing that can wreck a good story for me faster that. Sometimes I start a book, and it’s just so badly written that I don’t want to spend more time on it, but I do want to know how it ends. I usually skip over sex or violence – especially violence. Right now I’m reading a book that has a few flashback chapters relating to religious trauma. Skipping right over those suckers. The only way I made it through Jane Eyre was by skipping the entire first section, then going back to the beginning after reading the rest of the book.