I've finally accepted that

 life's too short to finish a book you're not enjoying.  

I've always thought that giving up on a book part way through was some sort of sin - goodness only knows where that puritanical notion came from, but it was fairly firmly entrenched from a very young age until quite recently. I was still feeling slightly guilty about giving up on that Peter James one a few months ago which I wortte about somewhere on the blog. The book that finally persuaded me that throwing up my hands in horror and frustration was not only allowable but sometimes the only thing to do was this

I've avoided Cole's books as being not my sort of thing for many years despite the miles of shelving her work takes up in crime fiction sections in bookshops. This was partly because I'm not much of a thriller reader and partly because a friend told me once that she'd read one and enjoyed it so much she had picked up another, only to find that it was basically all the same characters but with different names.and a plot that was eerily similar to the first one she read. Formulaic, she said.

This one came from my friend E, it was next in the bag after Hogfather so I just picked it up and opened it. I lasted until about page 100, which was only a fraction of the book, and frankly I should have ditched it long before then. But I wanted to give it a 'fair go' as my Aussie friends would say. so I pressed on. 

Apart from none of he characters being particularly likeable, a complaint I make so often I feel I should be bale to bind  it to a key so that I can add it at one stroke rather than having to type it out in full I was appalled by what I hesitate to call the 'style' of the writing. Cole does not believe in saying a thing once if she can get away with saying it seven or eight times. Possibly she is paid by the page. Or perhaps she just dictates this stuff into a recorder, never listens back to it and sends it off to her publishers who can't be bothered to supply an editor, because the stuff sells regardless. 

And Cole is a best seller so millions out there must like it. I'm just not among them. I am however grateful to the book for finally teaching me the lesson that it's sometimes a waste of time to keep on plodding through a book that's doing nothing for you.