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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Gwilym Mumford

The Guide #164: The quit list – when to give up on that book, TV show and more

A stack of books with a ladder on an orange background, could illustrate ideas like achievements, homework, academia and success
In the age of everything, don’t feel too bad about quitting while you are ahead. Photograph: J Studios/Getty Images

It’s list-making season for those of us who write about culture, the point of the year where we tot up all the things we’ve consumed in the past 11-and-a-bit months and try to decide which of them is the best. For me, this exercise always comes with a pang of guilt over the culture I either haven’t got around to watching/listening to/reading or, even worse, started and then never finished. Books pile up on the bedside table, podcasts sit dormant in my series feed, and TV shows lie half-watched on the (far too) many streaming services I’ve signed up for.

In the age of so-much content, this isn’t a problem confined to professional list-makers. But should you stick with that TV show, game, podcast or book you’ve been struggling through, or should you abandon ship? To help you in that tricky decision, I’ve asked some of the Guardian’s sage cultural heads for their advice:

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