I want to defend the practice of abandoning books midway. There is no obligation to finish a book you've started. The sunk cost fallacy applies to reading. Life is short and there are more good books than you can read.

The question I ask when considering whether to abandon a book: am I not enjoying it because it's asking something difficult from me, or am I not enjoying it because it isn't good? These produce different answers. A difficult book that's asking something real deserves more patience. A bad book does not.

The way I distinguish between them: if I'm getting something from it every ten or fifteen pages even when the whole isn't clicking, it's probably the first kind. If I'm reading pages hoping they'll redeem the pages before them and they never do, it's probably the second.