Book Blogger Hop (28)

This week's Book Blogger Hop question is...

What makes you keep reading beyond the first few pages of a book, and what makes you want to stop reading a book and put it back on the shelf?

In general, it takes a lot to make me not read beyond the first few pages. I like to give books a decent chance, and I usually make myself get to around page 100 before I drop it. However, if I find the writing in the book to be extremely unpolished or the characters to be extremely irritating in a way that was unintended by the author, then I just drop it.

For example, I once read the first book in a series I won't name (not a very popular one in any case) and I just found it impossible to read. The prose was immature and felt more like a biased social commentary than a story, and the main character annoyed me to the point that I couldn't bear to read past page 20. Other than that, though, I will usually read on in a book.