This may be a familiar scenario to you (as it is to myself and all book lovers): you've started a classic novel/current bestseller/a friend's all-time favorite. You're mildly interested. Soon, you're just bored. You don't care who killed so and so, or how the multi-generational saga will unfold. But, this book has been hailed for decades as a masterpiece. Or, everyone is talking about this new book by Famous Author. Or, this book changed my boyfriend's life — I can't stop now. You tell yourself, I haven't read enough of it/I'm already half done/ I'm not as smart as others if I don't like it.

My (and Guy Dammann's) advice — step away from the book. First of all, no matter what anyone else thinks, you're entitled to your opinion. For instance, I hate Joyce Carol Oates's books. Yes, yes, I know — Columbia, Princeton, awards, prolific, etc. She's probably a lovely woman, others may be touched by her stories, but I'm not a fan. I don't apologize.

On the otherhand, my favorite book of all time is The Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears. In my humble opinion, it's one of the greatest books ever written. But for my friends and co-workers, there was eye-rolling, groaning, "it was so boring." I play offended, but it's cool. (To those who don't like Christopher Moore, the genius of A Dirty Job and The Stupidest Angel, well, I can't be seen with you).

It has also been my experience that, if you hate a book, set it down and it may come back to you, somehow. I hated Poe as a teenager — not anymore. Ditto for Truman Capote, who is now a favorite (and may I add, Capote over Infamous). It took me a couple of years to get into Primary Colors, but in the end I loved it. The most memorable return to a book for me was The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie. I started it when I was 18, when it was first released. I gave up before Vina even met Ormus. A few months ago, I devoured it. I'm still not over it. Since I've finished it, no other book can compare. Who knows why I felt nothing at 18 or why now it's a song that I want to hear again and again. It doesn't matter either way. There's always another book.

But I feel your pain, still. As zen as I may be about it now, it's instinct for a bibliophile to feel guilt over abandoning a book. Just yesterday I let go of Heyday by Kurt Anderson. I know I'll go back to it someday. But it's not the right time. I move on. 

Now, A Farewell to Arms. Did that suck or what? I actually finished it, too. Never again!

I could not put down Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky. The experience was a first for me: as I was finishing it, I felt sadness, and a little desperation. I knew the end was near, that this person had to leave me soon, and there was nothing I could do about it. I had never before felt as if I would miss a book, or it's author, as I would a friend going away for good. It must have been because of the book's background. I knew Némirovsky died at Auschwitz before she could finish it. I knew the last three intended parts of the novel died with her, unwritten. It's silly, really, wishing someone gone for six decades to somehow be saved because of her words. Suite Française will never be finished. The other precious 5,999,999 others were never saved either. Too much was lost. I feel it when I think of the last three missing parts of that novel.

The remaining words are all the world can ever have of a writer anyway. Suite Française was just our introduction to Némirovsky. Her previous novels are being translated and sold. And another, although much shorter, novel was found in her archives. Chaleur du Sang, or Fire in the Blood as we will know it, will be published in the fall, along with a biography of Némirovsky. What is left will have to be enough.

Jennifer Leblanc