Every author has their own cadence with the written word, and sometimes, their pacing or word choice just doesn’t jive with us from the onset. That doesn’t necessarily mean the book isn’t good. For example: I found the first chapter of Hunger Games jarring and confusing when I read it the first time. Weird, right? So many people told me this particular novel grabbed them from page one. But my distracted mind kept wondering if the “I” in the story was a boy or a girl—a fact that wasn’t confirmed until chapter two or three. Although, once I grasped the feel for the author’s writing, my mind stopping seeing sentence structures and the story took over.

I’ve experience this struggle with enough novels that it no longer surprises me. I always give every book I open up at least three chapters before deciding if it floats my boat or not. Really, it’s a courtesy to the author. Every book written took somebody’s blood sweat and tears to create. A little patience on our part isn’t too much to ask in my opinion. But the “immediate satisfaction” world we live in might have some tossing aside good reads before really giving them a chance. What a shame. We can and should do better than that.