on books, finished and unfinished

Twice today I've heard references on NPR to some study which said that certain books are rarely read all the way through. One that was mentioned both times was Hawking's "A Brief History of Time."

Hawking's best-selling book was described as being "too hard to read," but I read it at least twice and had no difficulty with it at all. It isn't even a particularly long book. To be sure, I've long been interested in science and read books on chemistry and physics for fun when I was younger, so I wasn't exactly going into Hawking territory blind.

I only willingly gave up on reading two books in my life, to my best recollection; one was a book from the Left Behind series, which I abandoned after one chapter or possibly less because it was just that awful, the other was Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead," which I also gave up on after a chapter or so, and for the same reason.