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Not sure whether to keep going with a book you're not loving? Enter your age and we'll calculate your personal "permission to quit" page number, based on librarian Nancy Pearl's well-known 100-page rule.
Nancy Pearl's rule is simple: if you're under 50, give a book 100 pages before deciding whether to keep going. Once you're over 50, subtract your age from 100 — the result is your new threshold, so the older you get, the less patience the rule expects you to have for a book that isn't working. If you're 100 or older, the rule says you're allowed to judge a book by its cover alone (with our full respect).
This is a permission slip, not an obligation — plenty of readers happily ignore page-count rules entirely and quit on page three, or push through to the end no matter what. Use whichever approach makes reading feel good for you.
Librarian Nancy Pearl's rule says readers under 50 should give a book 100 pages before deciding to quit. Readers over 50 should subtract their age from 100 — the result is how many pages to give it, so a 70-year-old only owes a book 30 pages.
Yes — reading is meant to be enjoyable, and there are far more good books than time to read them. Setting a book aside after giving it a fair chance isn't a failure, it's just making room for something that fits you better right now.