Sci-Fi, fantasy and speculative Indie Authors Review discussion

I'm interested in how people feel about skimming parts of a story. Do you consider it to be a major flaw in a work if you don't want to read everything in it? Or does skimming the parts that don't grab you fine, as long as the parts that do interest you hold together reasonably well?

Aside from very few exceptions (book two repeating what happen in book one while I have read book one the day before etc) I consider skimming a bad thing. If I feel the need to skim, something has been done wrong and it's going to show in my review.

Skim a bit: fine but skimming too much means it's not interesting and I either want to know what happens next or I need to finish the book while I don't feel like reading it. Either way, that's a no-no for me. It'll lose a star or two, and probably three or four if it's that bad.

I agree with GG. If I feel the need to skim a part of the plot, it means I lost interest and will probably feel like putting the book away for good.

Life is too short for bad books.

Yeah, of me personally, if I m skimming, then I am bored. And am hoping that maybe, just maybe, this is the boring passage the won't sink the ship for me. But it is NEVER a good sign when I start skiing a book. That usually means I toss it, and quite likely the author as well. Unfair? Maybe. But that's just how I do it?

I find that it is the material I am reading that sinks a book, not the material I am skimming. Normally I am skimming over material that I don't find important to the story I am following.

Unfortunately I don't have a good sense of grammar, so mps, rogue point of views, unfounded punctuation don't faze me, so I don't find that a reason to put down a book unless it's really noticeable.

I think with ebooks, readers will soon be able to choose how descriptive passages will be by selecting which version of the story they want to read. I see in some reviews that people skip over sex and violence because it is too descriptive, not realistic, or just not interested, but continue to read the book. This could mean the days of reading every word becomes optional. The simplest choices would be full blown or abridged.

I have albums where I don't like every song but I still like the album. It's hard to skip a song on vinyl, but a snap with the skip button on a cd player. I have no idea if one can skip to the next streaming tune.

Interesting feedback, everyone.

I'll skim for two reasons. First, the story just loses my interest at some point, I'll skim ahead to see if it grabs me again. If so, I might go back and read the parts I skimmed to see if I missed anything. Otherwise, I won't finish.

The second reason is that the plot splits into multiple threads. I'm not always that interested in each thread, so I'll follow the ones a prefer. I don't mind when authors do this, and won't downgrade a book for it, since I'm still getting what I want out of the book anyway.