This post previously appeared on Business Insider.
By Megan Willett
They may be some of the most famous books in history, but Catch-22, Atlas Shrugged, and The Lord of the Rings are among 10 of the most “abandoned” books, according to reader-driven book recommendation website Goodreads.
Interested in why people set aside their books, Goodreads analyzed which books were most frequently shelved by its users.
The top five most abandoned contemporary books included J. K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy, Fifty Shades of Grey, and Eat Pray Love. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Wicked were also frequently discarded.
And when it came to the most frequently started but unfinished books ever, they were all classics: Catch-22, The Lord of the Rings, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Moby Dick, and Atlas Shrugged were the five least-finished books.
Almost half of Goodreads users said the reason they stopped reading was because the book in question was either too slow or boring. But a whopping 38 percent say they always finish their books, even if they set it down and pick it back up years later.
See the full infographic at Goodreads.
