Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Petty Reasons You’ve DNF’d a Book.
I can’t quite go with this topic — I don’t consider any reason for DNFing to be petty. I read for my own enjoyment — no one pays me to do it (can you imagine?) and the only stake I have is the pleasure I get from reading. If a book isn’t working for me, for any reason, I don’t feel bad (or petty) if I put it aside.
Here are a few reasons why I might DNF a book:
- Wrong book, wrong time: Sometimes a book just doesn’t suit my mood in the moment. These are books I may come back to at some point… but not always.
- Misleading cover and/or synopsis: A book that’s blurbed as laugh-out-loud funny or that has a cute contemporary cover — and then turns out to be heavy or overly serious — can be a real turn-off.
- Unexpected graphic violence: I know what to expect when I pick up a horror novel, and that’s a choice I make. But I don’t want to encounter guts and gore out of the blue.
- Purple prose: Bad metaphors, weird descriptions, sentences that I have to stop and parse — if the writing itself isn’t enjoyable, then even a compelling story will lose me.
- Unsatisfying world-building: When the world-building (especially in fantasy) isn’t well-enough developed – or at the other extreme, is so overly complicated that it’s impossible to follow — I pretty much check out.
- Nonsensical plotting: Plain and simple, it has to make sense… or at the very least, have a smidge of logic.
- No oomph: This might be kind of vague, but if a book doesn’t grab me in the first 10-20%, I’m not going to stick with it.
- Obnoxious formatting issues: I don’t mean for ARCs — I know to expect formatting issues with these. But for finished books, some types of formatting drive me batty, including novels that over-use footnotes; no chapters (not acceptable to me in anything but short stories or novellas); not using quotation marks (ugh).
- Late or disconnected sequels: This may be a case of “it’s not you, it’s me”, but if a sequel comes out waaaaay after the previous book, I just may not care enough to put the pieces back together. I’ve found myself DNFing when I realize I can’t be bothered to figure out where the story left off or what I’m supposed to remember from a few years back. Similarly, if a book is billed as a sequel but only has a vague connection to the previous book, I may not feel like making the effort to keep going.
- It’s just a matter of taste: Beyond the reasons above, sometimes a book simply doesn’t appeal to me, and there may not be a specific reason. Could be the writing style, or the subject matter, or the tone… but I’ve had many experiences where a book just hasn’t worked me (even though it might be great for someone else).
What might make you DNF a book?
If you wrote a TTT post this week, please share your link!
Bookshelf Fantasies 
This list makes a lot of sense. 🩷🌷🌺
Thanks!
These are all good reasons. Also if I find the subject matter disturbing. I don’t need nightmares from what I’ve read.
Agreed — especially when it’s not expected.
All great reasons, Lisa. II like your comment about the timing being off for certain books. I recently put a book down because the timing was wrong, but when I came back to it, I really enjoyed it. Happy reading!
I’ve had that experience as well, and can think of at least one time where I ended up discovering that I loved the book!
I like these reasons and especially agree with the last one. Reading is such an individual thing and it’s always interesting when I read reviews when people have such different takes on the same book.
Definitely — it can be hard to define, but there are books that I’m sure are perfectly fine but just don’t resonate with me at all.
Fab list, I’m with you on the formatting issues!
Ugh, that’s the worst! It makes me so annoyed when I feel like a book is unreadable because someone made bad formatting choices (or the copyediting was sloppy).
I so hate how sloppy editing has gotten in recent years!! It seems really basic grammar and spelling msitakes are impossible to get away from, no matter what you’re reading! It can really detract from the read! (And then there’s the one I’m currently reading that I’m sure they put the wrong character name in one spot, which was *really* confusing!!)
I’ve dnfed for the exact same reasons.
Nice to be in good company!
It comforts me to read why others dnf a book! Sometimes I feel like a complete outlier! We share lots of reasons.
I’ve definitely DNFd books that other people have loved, but reading really is so specific to the person doing the reading.
No two people read the same book is so true!
Yes! This is one reason why I don’t do book clubs.
I’ve DNF’d books for all these reasons. There’s no sense for me to continue something that isn’t working for me, regardless of the reason. There are too many good books out there to waste time on bad ones.
Exactly. Not like I’ll ever run out of other options. 🙂
Yep!
Great list. Numbers 2 and 3 hit home for me as well. Number 6 would do it as well. Thanks for sharing.
https://thebookconnectionccm.blogspot.com/2024/04/top-ten-tuesdays-top-ten-darn-good.html
Thank you!
I do have a hard time with sequels that are widely spaced apart. My memory is terrible, so I can’t usually remember what happens from book to book. Sometimes, I’ll just quit the series because I really don’t want to go back and re-read all the previous books.
Happy TTT!
Susan
http://www.blogginboutbooks.com
Oh, same here, I’ve quit a few series for exactly that reason! But for series I love, I’ll put in the effort to do a reread before starting a new book.
These are all great reasons to DNF. I especially like Misleading cover or synopsis, that makes me so mad sometimes!
It can be so frustrating! Even if it’s a decent book, if the cover/synopsis makes me think I’m going to be reading something really different than what it is, I end up resenting it and not wanting to continue.
Now that you mention it, a couple of books that are part of my favourite series have been this way, and I’ve found myself being really disappointed by them. The most recent one the blurb was really misleading. One event mentioned in it was really a non-event (resolved in no time flat), and the other supposedly main aspect of the plot didn’t happen until 3/4 of the way through and then was resolved within a couple of pages! So the book ended up being very different than expected. If the blurb had been more accurate, I think I would’ve enjoyed the book much more.
We definitely share a lot of the same reasons, Lisa! I found the ‘no quotation marks’ jab particularly funny, bc I was just talking to a friend who was telling me to watch Sally Rooney adaptations instead of attempting to read her books bc she knows the lack of quotation marks will piss me off. 😭
Same for the sequels as well. I’m a binge reader 100%, plus my memory is NOT great, so if it takes a while for a sequel to come out, there’s a huuuuge chance I won’t be interested enough to pick it up.
The sequels thing is a bummer, because even if I enjoyed the earlier book, I have to really love something to put in the effort to reread or try to remember what happened earlier. My best series reading experiences have all been binges!
I’ve DNFed books for all of these reasons, too. And I don’t feel any of them are petty.
Nope. Any reason that a book isn’t working for a reader seems valid to me!
Totally agree with your intro and your list. For me, it’s very often wrong book at the wrong time. I think maybe 90% of the time, that’s the case.
Very often for me as well, especially when it comes to ARCs. This is part of why I don’t do challenges — any time I feel “obligated” to read a book at a particular time, I start having issues with it.
Oh yes mismarketing is the worst!! I don’t know why publishers do this, because it can really effect whether the right people find your book or not! I think that they think it won’t matter if the wrong audience picks up your book, because that’s just more people reading it, when in actuality, it can tank a books ratings and the people who actually should be reading your book will give it a miss. I completely get what you mean about random graphic violence as well. It can be really off-putting. I like to know what I’m getting into. I do also give up on books I’m not in the mood for, but don’t tend to count them as DNFs cos I plan to come back to them later. But yeah the majority of the time, it’s just that the book lacks oomph or just isn’t to my taste in some way. Recently, I gave up on a thriller where I’d listened to 75% of it, because I just realised I was listening to it on as high a speed as I could to get to the end, but realised I didn’t actually care what the end twist was anymore. I’m just not into continuing with books I’m not enjoying these days.
That’s funny about DNFing at 75%, but I’ve had those urges too — although that far into a book, I tend to just power through to the end, or will sometimes keep hoping that there must be a payoff yet to come.
I pretty much agree with your whole list – ugh purple prose just makes me roll my eyes and laugh… but generally for the wrong reasons!