I hate giving up on books because it feels like failure but sometimes there’s no denying a book just isn’t for me. Wuthering Heights, Crime and Punishment and The Shard by Bret Easton Ellis are the last 3 books I didn’t finish.
Can’t remember why I stopped with Wuthering Heights. I stopped with Crime and Punishment because it’s boring, long winded and at 200 pages it felt like everything is much longer than necessary. I stopped reading The Shard because it’s shit
by Between3N20Karakters
29 Comments
I DNF books all the time. If I’m not enjoying it, I’m not going to force it. I read for entertainment and pleasure, so if I don’t like it, I stop. Sometimes I try them again, because enjoying a book sometimes depends on your mood. It also helps that I get all my books from the library, so if I don’t like them, I don’t really feel guilty for spending money on them.
I have this rule that if a book didn’t catch my interest by 10-20% of what I’ve read so far, then I’m dropping it. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule.
My last DNF was The Westing Game. It had a lot of characters for a book that’s less than 200 pages long. I read The Inheritance Games bundle instead. It was okay.
Ulysses. I tried, believe me, I really tried.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.
It’s probably been a year since I put it down. I know exactly where I left off and still remember almost word by word what happens, but I can’t finish it and I’m afraid it’ll get even worse. I will finish it at some point though, it’s very well written!
Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune. I was bored and I already wasn’t enjoying the writing style. Author was telling us how bad the main character was, instead of allowing the reader to see that for themselves; which I consider lazy writing right off the bat. Everything was too sweetie pie nicey nicey for me. Characters felt flat. It was a DNF for me, so I flipped to the end just to see how it ended, and I found it hypocritical “don’t get attached because they need to move on, but we will get attached and stop you moving on”. Sorry to the ones who loved this book, but I thought it was rubbish.
The stand by Stephen King
I’ve tried to read it twice, enjoyed what I’ve read, the ran out of steam with the story around 700 pages in.
Midnight Sun by Stephanie Meyer. I loved Twilight and all the others when I was in middle/early high school. I figured why not give this one a try? 🤮. As an adult, I really couldn’t do the toxicity, stalking, gaslighting weirdness that is this series.
“War and Peace” and I am still furious because I read about 8/10 of it.
Great Expectations. I forced myself to like it, but I just couldn’t, I’ll try it again some time
Dune. I really tried.
my recent DNFs:
– Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris – gave up pretty quickly because i thought the “villain” was too unrealistic; no back story or reason for why they’re “evil” just feels lazy to me
– How to Love Your Neighbor by Sophie Sullivan – spoiled rich boy male love interest. not redeemable to me lol.
– The Deal by Elle Kennedy – this was worse than wattpad fanfiction. just terrible to read.
House of Leaves. I really don’t like epistolary fiction
I don’t DNF too often, but one book I did was One Hundred Years of Solitude. A lot of people hyped this book up, and I know people love it. Something about it just wasn’t holding my attention, and trying to get through it was painfully slow.
This may seem like sacrilege to members /r/books, but both Blood Meridian and One Hundred Years of Solitude were DNFs for me. Cormac McCarthy’s style doesn’t really engage me, and One Hundred Years of Solitude was just not palatable whatsoever, possibly because I’m a “magical realism novice”.
There’s a chance that Infinite Jest will end up on my DNF list, too. I don’t really understand the hype around David Foster Wallace.
Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware was my most recent DNF. I just really hate thrillers where the main character is a woman who is attacked and constantly gaslighted and treated as hysterical. That shit is too close to IRL to be remotely entertaining and it just gives me panic attacks
I actually finished it, but I wish I hadn’t finished “A Little Life.” An actual shit book, but had to finish it just to see how much worse it would get. Such a waste of time, hate that book and the author, but I got perverse pleasure out of how bad it was 😀
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. I usually love his books even though they are slow but this one I couldn’t finish.
I DNFed The Midnight Library, felt like reading a booklong motivational leaflet.
Fourth Wing. I cannot believe this book gained so much hype! I felt like I was reading a different book than everyone else. The dialogue was extremely juvenile and the authors need to randomly curse 5x per page just felt so cheesy. Lines like, “for the win” and “vibe”, took me right out of the “fantasy” setting. The MC was supposedly 20, but it read more like a horny teenager. I DNF after like 200 pages and even that was struggle.
My most recent was Blood Miridian by Cormac McCarthy. So well written but hard to follow and something you really need to be in the mood to sit down and read. Hopefully I’ll come back to it one day.
one hundred years of solitude. i couldn’t stomach the romantic relationships, they just kept getting more messed up
Books about relationships or self improvement that ask you to do something and record your results.
Eat. Pray. Love.
Soooooooo baaaaaad.
And very few others. But this one really made me angry.
Ready Player One. Some of the worst dialogue I’ve ever read. A purely abysmal experience to the point I simply don’t understand how it is popular at all. It’s really, really bad lol.
For Whom the Bell Tolls. I can only listen to a protagonist think about sexing his gf for so long. The recollection of the atrocities committed in that town was really vivid and interesting, but it contained a 20-something page literal wall of text with little paragraph breaks. It just wasn’t fun for me to read.
Priory of the Orange Tree. Started it because of the reviews, but hated all the characters. There was no one likeable in the bunch. Later wanted to see them all die and had to force myself to turn a page.
At that point I got rid of it.
I have a kindle and libby so it’s pretty easy to DNF if something doesn’t grab my interest these days. Recently I put down Piraneisi and haven’t gone back. I’m not sure I will. The over use of proper nouns was honestly kind of annoying lol, but moreover the main character seems to be not someone I want to follow the whole book.
I really wish I had just DNFed Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone. It was confusing in a way that did not grab me in the slightest. I never had any idea of what was going on until the end, and that was just barely worth it.
I’ve also DNFed American Gods no fewer than 4 times. I want to like this book, I really do. The premise is neat. But it’s just so boring. It constantly feels like it’s building to something while nothing happens in the meantime. I gave up and read spoilers which only confirmed my DNF.
American Gods by Neil Gaimen
American Gods by Neil Gaiman.
It felt too much like a wandering story rather than a cohesive A to B.