When Do You Just STOP?!?

It seemed everywhere I turned the title The Life of Edgar Sawtelle was appearing. When I went to book blogs, Amazon, and magazines there it was. It's a New York Times Bestseller. It's an Oprah Book. I was dying to read it. Now I'm dying to just get it over with. I'm 400 pages in and it's just not working for me. Perhaps the hype killed my experience. Perhaps now is not the time for me to read it. Maybe I'd love it four months from now. I don't know why I don't like it, I just don't.

So my question is, when do you give up? I feel like I can't stop since I've invested so much time into it. On the other hand, I feel like I'm throwing good time after bad and time can be more precious than money. My rule of thumb is 50 pages. If I'm not hooked by page 50, I don't continue. If I stop earlier I don't feel like I've given the author a chance. What do you do when you're at page 400 and have almost 200 pages to go and a stack of other titles that you're anxious to read?

Well, my solution is to scan and browse. I never do this, but I'm stuck. If I were on page 120, maybe I could wave the white flag, but no way can I do it on page 400. So I'm zipping through the pages. Dog training - scan - naming puppies - skim - conversation betwen Edgar and his mother - read that section - more dogs - browse... I'm I getting the story? I'm sure I'm not, but I guess I'll find out at the end. The literature isn't enough to keep my attention. I thought I craved dialogue, but Life of Pi is one of my all-time favorite books and most of it took place when he was lost at sea.

So, I should crank out the next couple hundred pages soon and then can move on to another book. If the ending blows me away, maybe I'll read it properly at another time in my life. For now, I'll skim my way to the end. Not very satisfying, but it does the job.

**Update: I finished it this morning. I didn't realize that it was a retelling of Hamlet, until someone pointed it out to me. Duh! Now I'm on to New Moon for my YA Book Challenge.