Sometimes it takes a while to get up to speed with the period in which the book was written, to acquaint yourself with the author's style. James Fenimore Cooper is a good example. His books are classics, but they are hard to get used to when you pick the first one up, so you have to give them time. Mark Twain wrote a withering criticism of Cooper's literary offenses, but he still read the books. Sometimes the author trips over him/herself and you have to work around them if the story is a good one in spite of the author.

My kids are discovering what every kid discovers when assigned a "Classic" for school reading--that Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte didn't write in the same way as modern novelists. But once you're used to it, it moves along.

So, the answer is that sometimes you read one all the way through that you don't like because you're hoping for some redeeming feature along the way. There may be potential, and you're giving the author the benefit of the doubt. But it has been my experience that after finishing one disappointing book by an author, I'm not easily seduced into reading any more of their works.

SRS