You don’t need to finish every book you start. But finish enough to know what endings teach.

Abandoning a book you are getting nothing from is sensible, and abandoning every book is a habit with a specific cost. Endings are where an argument has to land and where a story pays for what it set up, so a reader who always leaves early never sees how either is done. The permission and the warning arrive together.

Put down whatever you are only reading out of duty. Then take one you nearly finished and read the last fifty pages this week. Notice what the ending did that the middle could not.