You’re allowed to quit a boring book. Life’s too short to finish chapters that teach you nothing.

Finishing what you started is a good instinct that occasionally works against you. A book is not a contract, and hours spent grinding through one that gives you nothing are hours not spent on the one that would have changed how you think. Guilt about abandoning it is usually about the person who started it rather than anything on the page.

Give a book fifty pages, or a couple of chapters, then decide honestly. Put it down without ceremony if it is not working, and note it in case a later version of you wants it. Some books are just waiting for a different year.