One of Nancy's strongest held beliefs is that no one should ever finish a book that they're not enjoying, no matter how popular or well reviewed the book is. To solve that problem, she has developed The Rule of 50, which she explains in Book Lust:

"Believe me, nobody is going to get any points in heaven by slogging their way through a book they aren't enjoying but think they ought to read. I live by what I call 'the rule of fifty,' which acknowledges that time is short and the world of books is immense. If you're fifty years old or younger, give every book about fifty pages before you decide to commit yourself to reading it, or give it up. If you're over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100. The result is the number of pages you should read before deciding.

"Sometimes, your mood has a lot to do with whether you'll like a book. "I always leave open the option of going back to a book that I haven't liked (especially if someone I respect has recommended it to me) sometime later. I've begun many books, put them down unfinished, then returned a month or two, or years, later and ended up loving them. This happened with Matthew Kneale's English Passengers, John Crowley's Little, Big, and Andrea Barrett's The Voyage of the Narwhal."

• Which books took you a while to get into, but you loved in the end? Add a comment or review.