DNF: Do you do it?

September 4, 2015     booklovi     Uncategorized

 
DNF: Do you do it?
 
 
Book blogging opened up a whole new set of acroyms for me. One that kept popping up was DNF- being the clueless person I was, I had to google it. DNF=Did Not Finish. Ahhhhh! That made a lot more sense. This mostly came up when a person had decided not to finish reading a book of course.
 
Initially I couldn’t understand why someone would do that. It felt almost blasphemous. Not finish a book?! How is that even possible? I had always been the kind of person who felt committed to see a book through to the very end, even if I wasn’t really loving it. Part of it is that I felt almost obligated. Like there was some invisible person judging me if I didn’t finish that book. Silly, of course. The other part was optimisim. Maybe if I get through to that next chapter the writing will improve/main character won’t be an unforgiveable jerk/characters will stop talking to each other in horrible wooden dialogue.
 
Most of the time, when I stuck with those not so great books, they didn’t get much better. Surprise! Not. I was starting to realize that those books that I was conflicted about finishing rarely turned out to be books that I was happy I had finished. I had to start trusting my instincts about what did or didn’t work for me. As I’ve said in the past, blogging has really helped me figure out what does and doesn’t work for me as a reader. Every person is different, and obviously what one person loves, another may not. So I had to be ok with the fact that sometimes I didn’t love those books that other people swooned over.
 
Another major aspect of learning to know when to stop reading a book was time. Life is crazy for most of us. Jobs, families and the day to day can be a big factor. When I have free time (haha free time, what’s that?!), do I really want to spend it slogging through a book that I don’t really care about, or worse, dislike? No. So if something isn’t working for me, I need to put it aside for something that I could really love.
 
Book blogging does present another side to the decision though. ARCs. An exciting thing about blogging is that bloggers get to read a book before any of the general public can. And part of the reason we get that privilege is that we are helping to spread the world about that book and give feedback on it to the author and publisher. So for a long time, when I was reading an ARC, I made myself finish it. No matter what. But when I went to write the review, I would have a hard time sitting down to give helpful feedback because I had spend the whole time forcing myself to sit and read it. Who wants to force themselves to read something? No one. So for me, even though I do feel obligated to read those ARC’s, if it’s really not working for me I would rather send the publisher a quick note saying why the book didn’t work for me than try to finish it just because I had to.
 
So although I don’t do it very often, on occasion I will DNF a book. As I grow as a reader, I have realized that it’s a better choice for me to do that than to waste time finishing a book because I ‘have to’. 
 
What’s your opinion on DNF’ing a book? Is it different if it’s an ARC you’ve received? A book you’ve purchased? Let me know!

2 responses to “DNF: Do you do it?

  1. Yes I do. In fact, I just DNFed The Wanderers, too slow to pick up, cliche, and it had a ton of continuity problems. The author kept forgetting what season it was and whether they were inside or outside. Proof that you need to get unbiased beta readers that aren't kissing your buttocks. 😀

  2. I DNF because I have a backlog of books to read from last year. If I genuinely can't get committed to a book and it's unbearable and I go away and try something to get me out of a slump and still can't get into it, then I'll DNF it. It doesn't happen often – I'm way more likelyt o force through a book and rate it llow than to DNF, but I've DNF'd books before where I just couldn't commit to the writing style, even if the plot was working for me.

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