But if a novel starts well and descends into trash, then it seems to me that it’s worth continuing to see if it gets better, or to see where the writer went wrong. And if it was bad from page one, then the whole “should I drop it?” issue is secondary. The best way to avoid wasting time on trash is to avoid trash entirely—i.e. to not start reading it.
For the Atlantic, Juliet Lapidos argues that finishing a book, even when it takes a turn for the worse, is worth the effort.
