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?
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Bookshelf Fantasies 