Uh, Forgettable

I Remember You
Harriet Evans
Simon and Schuster

Can someone please explain to me why I feel like I have to finish a book even though it is absolute crap?  What is it about my personality that prevents me from walking away?  I can count on one hand the number of books that I have started and haven't finished.  In fact, let me share the list with you:

• Anna Karenina -- I tried to read this book when I was in Russia earlier this year, but reading about Moscow, when I was in St. Petersburg, didn't seem quite the thing.  I might have finished it on the way home, but I needed room in my luggage for souvenirs (I only took one bag).  Leaving it there, mostly unread, hurt me a little, but I take both comfort and secret delight in the fact that I ditched my copy on a nightstand in the Hotel Dostoevsky. 
• Ulysses -- Can you say Joyce at his most impenetrable?  I attempted to read it one summer in university and gave up.  I tried again in my early thirties and survived the experience.  Gotta love the snotgreen sea.
• Bridget Jones' Diary -- The only book that I have ever thrown away.  I was in Tokyo at the time and desperate for anything English as I was having a horrible case of culture shock.  Turns out I wasn't that desperate.  I pitched the book after the first ten pages, left the hotel and found an English bookstore.  What did I read instead?  The first two books of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  I was angling for a Godzilla novel, but couldn't find one in English.

Nice list, huh?  Forty years of living and I have given up on only three novels.   Ugh -- think of all the hours I have wasted reading bad, bad writing.  I should have spared myself some head shaking and given up on I Remember You.  It was terrible!  So much so, in fact, that I'm not even going to bore you with the details. Minus one navel-gazing examples of badly written Chick Lit out of five.