For years I treated an unfinished book as a personal failure, which meant I forced my way through books I wasn’t enjoying instead of picking up something I actually wanted to read. Giving myself permission to stop at 50 pages if it wasn’t working meant I read more books overall, not fewer.
The fear was that I’d become someone who never finishes anything. What actually happened is the books I do finish now, I finish because I genuinely want to know what happens next, not out of obligation.
A shelf of abandoned books isn’t a record of failure, it’s just evidence that you were willing to try things and move on when they didn’t fit.