What are books you DNF'd and why?

[LJCC]

I know we are mostly authors here, but I perceive the majority of us have a knack for reading as well. I used to be all in, 100%—if I cracked open a book, I’d finish it, no matter what. Even if I knew, deep down, it wasn’t for me, even if the pages dragged like dead weight, I’d push through. That’s how it was. But then, this year, something shifted. I started putting books down, unfinished, and I didn’t feel guilty about it. I realized I’m a mood reader, completely, and my rating, my whole experience, swings on that vibe.

I DNF’d It Ends With Us after just one chapter. The writing—man, it’s just bad, really bad, couldn’t even pretend it wasn’t. So I dropped it, no looking back. And I refuse to read it further based solely on her insistence that it didn't need a trigger warning. 

And if you liked the book, I have nothing against you. It just didn't sit well with me.

 

[W_L]

Docile by KM Szpara

I like sci-fi, I like dystopian stories, I like gay erotica, and BDSM is the cherry on top. However, I just couldn't accept the bad plot concept of the story or the shallow character dynamics. DNF'd after 20 chapters. While the author claims the book is an indictment on class and capitalism, it's really just a story that glorifies victimization and victimizers. There is no real power dynamic, it's just abuse without any heart.

[ReaderPaul]

I have had several that I did not finish.  One book by a favorite author I read half of and the book got ruined in a freak accident.  I did not like the story enough to get a replacement copy.

Another I DNF was a book of mathematical history which, by halfway through, had math I did not have enough training in to understand some of the concepts.  I did read the first four chapters multiple times, however.

A story I read on Nifty and do not remember the title -- I read about 8 chapters and lost interest.  The story went from interesting and intriguing to stale cliché, staler cliché, and then descended into asinine incomprehensibility. 

[Krista]

Red, White, and Royal Blue - parts of it were far too bogged down by the political atmosphere, and since I read to escape political atmospheres (at least ones too close to the one we're in at the moment), I DNF'd it. It lost a lot of the humor and fun after about the middle of the book as well. 

Cassandra Clare's - Dark Artifices. I read and liked the Mortal Instruments, by the end of MI, I thought it was a big dragged out. Infernal Devices being her best trilogy. But afterwards her writing got way too predictable and one-note. So by extension, the first book of the Dark Artifices trilogy ended my run with her entirely.

Call me by your Name - I did a short review on another topic. Too wordy, too bogged down in cerebral pretentiousness that I just lost all feeling while I read the thing. If it got better in the latter half of the book, fine but I'll never know. 

Someone attempted to get me into reading James Patterson, I gave two of his books a try and DNF'd both of them. I can't remember the titles, so I can't say much about them, other than they were just too boring to hold my attention. 

There are countless other little fantasy books when YA - Fantasy was really big.

A series I wish I never picked up was the Twilight series, I really wanted to DNF the hell out of it, but stuck with it. Do not hold that against me, I beg. 

Edited September 22 by Krista

[LJCC]

8 hours ago, W_L said:

Docile by KM Szpara

I like sci-fi, I like dystopian stories, I like gay erotica, and BDSM is the cherry on top. However, I just couldn't accept the bad plot concept of the story or the shallow character dynamics. DNF'd after 20 chapters. While the author claims the book is an indictment on class and capitalism, it's really just a story that glorifies victimization and victimizers. There is no real power dynamic, it's just abuse without any heart.

• Docile by KM Szpara—Same! That tagline is what annoyed the shit out of me. I had anticipated a biting critique of the worst aspects of capitalism. I assumed it was going to make a point using the analogies of slavery and rape. Instead, I was met with a bland hiss and a speculative fiction that resembled the gay version of 50 Shades of Grey. I'm like, this would have made more sense if this was smut.

7 hours ago, Krista said:

Red, White, and Royal Blue - parts of it were far too bogged down by the political atmosphere, and since I read to escape political atmospheres (at least ones too close to the one we're in at the moment), I DNF'd it. It lost a lot of the humor and fun after about the middle of the book as well. 

Cassandra Clare's - Dark Artifices. I read and liked the Mortal Instruments, by the end of MI, I thought it was a big dragged out. Infernal Devices being her best trilogy. But afterwards her writing got way too predictable and one-note. So by extension, the first book of the Dark Artifices trilogy ended my run with her entirely.

Call me by your Name - I did a short review on another topic. Too wordy, too bogged down in cerebral pretentiousness that I just lost all feeling while I read the thing. If it got better in the latter half of the book, fine but I'll never know. 

Someone attempted to get me into reading James Patterson, I gave two of his books a try and DNF'd both of them. I can't remember the titles, so I can't say much about them, other than they were just too boring to hold my attention. 

There are countless other little fantasy books when YA - Fantasy was really big.

A series I wish I never picked up was the Twilight series, I really wanted to DNF the hell out of it, but stuck with it. Do not hold that against me, I beg. 

• Red, White, and Royal Blue—it's too, rated 18-20+ for me. 
• Cassandra Clare's—I only watched the series. More like I watched the gay snippets of the gay couple in YT. HAHA. The gay scenes with the gay warlock and Alec are kinda' hot. 
• Call me by your Name—Elio's inability to acknowledge and act on his feelings, in my opinion, is what makes this appealing. If I were to imbibe some lessons on it, I would emphasize first love and what constitutes a healthy relationship as opposed to a destructive one. But I understand you not finishing it. The book is forgettable, in my opinion, while having some beautiful wording and significant ideas. It doesn't appear to me that Aciman meant for it to be interpreted as a lesson about unhealthy first loves, at least not in a way that could be considered reflexive. Based on some interviews I saw,, it appears he is just fascinated with writing topics that are “taboo” and romanticizing the hell out of them, which I feel is something a lot of his readers do too. So he may be into that weird ass shit, and me, as a reader, is just extending its meaning apart from the author, liking said weird shit. HAHA! Also, I prefer the movie to the book.
• Twiliight—I read all books. I had to study what makes bad writing bad somehow. And so far, I still couldn't forget her use of overused words like: grimace, chagrin, incredulous, glower, and crooked smile. That fucking crooked smile. How crooked can it be Stephanie? 20 degrees crooked? Thirty degree? 180? Did his expression circumvent the laws of physics and turn him into the clown from IT? Is it 190? 200 degrees, Stephanie?

[W_L]

11 hours ago, Krista said:

....

A series I wish I never picked up was the Twilight series, I really wanted to DNF the hell out of it, but stuck with it. Do not hold that against me, I beg. 

Lol, Team Jacob will embrace everyone  

@KristaI think you should try The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer, if you want something that isn't super cerebral Sci-fi, but still brainy and stimulating with two compelling queer characters and an interesting plot. The author is likely a fan of Arthur C. Clarke.

12 hours ago, ReaderPaul said:

I have had several that I did not finish.  One book by a favorite author I read half of and the book got ruined in a freak accident.  I did not like the story enough to get a replacement copy.

Another I DNF was a book of mathematical history which, by halfway through, had math I did not have enough training in to understand some of the concepts.  I did read the first four chapters multiple times, however.

A story I read on Nifty and do not remember the title -- I read about 8 chapters and lost interest.  The story went from interesting and intriguing to stale cliché, staler cliché, and then descended into asinine incomprehensibility. 

Nifty is a hodge podge, it has some good stuff and it's the reason why I came here in the first place, along with several other communities. 

As for reference books, Food: A Cultural Culinary History by  Ken Albala, it's a college-level textbook that I bought with one of my Audible credits. I thought I could enjoy it, but dang, it was slow and didn't really give me much more detail than my knowledge of food history and interaction. I didn't finish it, I just skipped around the chapters and looked up some facts. (With Chapters like "From Eden to Kosher Laws" and "From Hippies to Foodies", it jumped around on food history)

Edited September 22 by W_L

[Mrsgnomie]

God, lately I feel like I’m DNF’ing almost every book I pick up (KU trash). I can’t even name them all. It’s horrible. I just want to get lost in an amazing book. 

[LJCC]

6 hours ago, Mrsgnomie said:

God, lately I feel like I’m DNF’ing almost every book I pick up (KU trash). I can’t even name them all. It’s horrible. I just want to get lost in an amazing book. 

What genre are you into anyway?

[Page Scrawler]

The latest book that I didn't finish, unfortunately, was a birthday present. One that I'd been hoping to get my hands on sooner rather than later. Olivetti, by Allie Millington, is the title in question. A book told in the alternating POV of a tween boy, whose mother has gone missing; and the semi-sentient typewriter she'd left behind.

The story started out a bit slow, but the plot gave me hope. The protagonist, Ernest, learns that his mother's old typewriter, Olivetti, is a repository of every word typed on its keys. Using his mom's words as a guide, he takes it upon himself to find her and bring her back home. After 'rescuing' Olivetti from a pawn shop, Ernest finds himself harangue'd by the daughter of the pawn shop's owner. Not for the illicit 'rescue' of Olivetti, but because she's equally intrigued by the typewriter. And she JUST. WON'T. LEAVE. THE KID. ALONE.

I intensely dislike characters like this, who think that every loner just needs to befriend someone, and then that lonely person's lot will be so vastly improved. And the best way to go about being friends with that loner, is to never give them a moment's peace.

So, yeah. That one annoying character just spoiled the whole book for me.

[Jason Rimbaud]

I have nothing to add except it took me until the last comment to figure out what DNF meant. 

I went through a lot of phrases and they were all wrong...

Dull Night Flights

Do Nightcrawlers Fly

Did Not Freeze

Daniel Not Frank

And once Page Scrawler said Did Not Finish, I was bummed. I thought it was something dirty and boy was I disappointed. 

The one book I never finished was Harry Potter (the first one), some of the worst writing ever. 

J

[LJCC]

DNF is Do Not Fart—most commonly plastered in Airlines, tight communal spaces like an underground sex dungeon.

A single fart, so nefarious, can deflate several erections and ruin the mood.

I almost forgot to mention, I DNF'd (Do Not Farted😞
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong.

• The novel is more about processing and articulating difficult memories than direct communication.
• The novel is about the swirling, the digging through those tangled memories, sifting them like sand through your fingers, trying to catch hold of the weight, the shape of them, wrestling with the ghosts until they make sense if they ever do.

That's how the novel felt to me. Same sentences. DIfferent interpretations. The second sentence is a bit more tiring though.

Edited September 25 by LJCC
Adding context.

[Jason Rimbaud]

38 minutes ago, LJCC said:

DNF is Do Not Fart—most commonly plastered in Airlines, tight communal spaces like an underground sex dungeon.

A single fart, so nefarious, can deflate several erections and ruin the mood.

I almost forgot to mention:
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong.

• The novel is more about processing and articulating difficult memories than direct communication.
• The novel is about the swirling, the digging through those tangled memories, sifting them like sand through your fingers, trying to catch hold of the weight, the shape of them, wrestling with the ghosts until they make sense if they ever do.

That's how the novel felt to me. Same sentences. DIfferent interpretations. The second sentence is a bit more tiring though.

Okay, so now I'm really confused. DNF means do not fart, so you DNF'd while reading a It Ends With Us, a book you thought smelled like farts?     Isn't that counter-intuitive? Sorry, asking for a friend?

And thank you for making it dirty, I am a very happy man now. 

Edited September 25 by Jason Rimbaud
Mis-spelled word I didn't correct

[PrivateTim]

I can't think of any book I did not finish, but I hated one book I did finish so much that I physically ripped the book up, which is something I never do.

I finished That was Then, This is Now and was so pissed off at how awful the book and the finish was I tore it into pieces.

[Talo Segura]

8 hours ago, PrivateTim said:

I can't think of any book I did not finish, but I hated one book I did finish so much that I physically ripped the book up, which is something I never do.

I finished That was Then, This is Now and was so pissed off at how awful the book and the finish was I tore it into pieces.

You got me interested. Looking up the book and author I was struck by the prejudice with this suggestion from Hinton's publisher: Hinton's publisher suggested she use her initials instead of her feminine given names so that the first male book reviewers would not dismiss the novel because its author was female.

[Zombie]

14 hours ago, Talo Segura said:

I was struck by the prejudice with this suggestion from Hinton's publisher: Hinton's publisher suggested she use her initials instead of her feminine given names so that the first male book reviewers would not dismiss the novel because its author was female.

it’s about the money (book sales) and publishers seeing prejudice elsewhere (hence ‘JK’ Rowling etc)

 

 

 

Edited December 1 by Zombie

[ReaderPaul]

11 hours ago, Talo Segura said:

You got me interested. Looking up the book and author I was struck by the prejudice with this suggestion from Hinton's publisher: Hinton's publisher suggested she use her initials instead of her feminine given names so that the first male book reviewers would not dismiss the novel because its author was female.

1 hour ago, Zombie said:

it’s about the money (book sales) and publishers seeing prejudice elsewhere (JK Rowling etc)

Science fiction and fantasy author Andre Norton started writing when she was a children's librarian in Cleveland, Ohio.  She legally changed her name from Alice Mary Norton to Andre Alice Norton when she started writing science fiction and fantasy, because the primary market was for boys at that time.  Her publishers normally referred to her as "Andre Norton" or Norton when referring to her books, so sales would not drop off if her female gender were revealed.  She also wrote under pen names Andrew North and Allen Weston.

I usually finish books that I start.  But once in a while I do not.  If I have too many interruptions when trying to get a good ways into a book, I sometimes lose interest for days, weeks, or even years.  I will prioritize favorite online authors over a physical book at times, because it is easier to read short chapters (under twenty-five thousand words) at times than to plow through a physical or Kindle or Nook book.

[lawfulneutralmage]

20 hours ago, PrivateTim said:

I can't think of any book I did not finish, but I hated one book I did finish so much that I physically ripped the book up, which is something I never do.

Same here.  For me it was a Robert A Heinlein book, the Martian or something like that. A Human child who was raised by Martians returns to Earth as young adult. Because they have no water, their most holy ritual is the "sharing of the water". In the book, a character explained that the Martian would probably try homosexual acts, but never share the ritual with those people as they were not worthy or something like that. Anyway, at that point, the book ended up in pieces.

[W_L]

This might be sacrilege to diehard fans of this sci-fi franchise, but I did not finish TekWar by William Shatner, nor do I have any intention to read the series.

[LJCC]

2 hours ago, W_L said:

This might be sacrilege to diehard fans of this sci-fi franchise, but I did not finish TekWar by William Shatner, nor do I have any intention to read the series.

William Shatner wrote a book? HAHAHAHAHA. 

Wiki says: TekWar is a series of science fiction novels created by Canadian actor William Shatner, ghost-written by American writer Ron Goulart...

Uhuh. Makes sense now. 😂

[Talo Segura]

11 hours ago, lawfulneutralmage said:

For me it was a Robert A Heinlein book, the Martian or something like that.

You have to place the book and the author in their time. Stranger in a Strange Land was published in 1961, it won the 1962 Hugo Award for Best Novel and became the first science fiction novel to enter The New York Times Book Review's best-seller list. In 2012, the Library of Congress named it one of 88 "Books that Shaped America". (Wikipedia)

Heinlein was born in 1907 and died in 1988, he served in the US navy, was a registered Republican, but according to Isaac Asimov, a flaming liberal. (Wikipedia) I guess you can say he was a man of his time, perhaps with the prejudices of the era, but also an envy to fight free although maybe he didn't get too far.

[Palantir]

1. Heinlein is one of the greats.

2. Reading is highly subjective and personal, and the old saying 'one man's meat is another man's poison' very much applies. Stating as fact, rather than opinion, that a particular novel or piece of writing is poorly written, wonderful, boring etc, can be taken with great exception by readers with different views.

3. Amended number 1. I regard Heinlein as one of the greats.

4. DNF. Good grief! I think this is a powerful tool for anyone who loves reading. There are more wonderful reading experiences available than anyone could ever get through, so why waste time reading stuff that doesn't do anything for you?

[ReaderPaul]

7 hours ago, Palantir said:

1. Heinlein is one of the greats.
2. Reading is highly subjective and personal, and the old saying 'one man's meat is another man's poison' very much applies. Stating as fact, rather than opinion, that a particular novel or piece of writing is poorly written, wonderful, boring etc, can be taken with great exception by readers with different views.
3. Amended number 1. I regard Heinlein as one of the greats.
4. DNF. Good grief! I think this is a powerful tool for anyone who loves reading. There are more wonderful reading experiences available than anyone could ever get through, so why waste time reading stuff that doesn't do anything for you?

I also regard Heinlein as one of the greats, but some of his books struck me as "blah."  Most I thought quite good.

I regard Anne McCaffrey as one of my authors considered great, but there was one of her books I did not read large sections of.  Later I read it again, and was at a point in my life where I could appreciate it.

Where in our life, and what else is requiring our time in our life, affect how we feel about reading something.

[Zombie]

19 hours ago, ReaderPaul said:

Where in our life, and what else is requiring our time in our life, affect how we feel about reading something.

good point. As with music, mood determines what you want 

[TetRefine]

City On Fire, by Garth Risk Hallberg. I was so excited when this novel first came out, and it had so much meat for a great story: 1970s New York, murder, subcultures, straight and gay characters, class, race. It was so highly anticipated that Hallberg received a $2 million advance for it, his debut novel.

However, the novel itself was a long, drawn-out mess that meandered aimlessly for pages on end. The author also thought he was showing what a high-brow literary turd he was by injecting all kinds of completely obscure words into the narrative that you constantly had to stop to look up to understand what was going on. I got to about page 400 and couldn't do it anymore. The novel got a very big heaping of criticism from literary critics and general readers alike, and for good reason. They also recently made it into an Apple TV+ series, and not surprisingly, it was also awful and cancelled after the first season. 

I just looked up the author on Amazon, and he came out with his second novel just this year, 9 years after this one. Looking on Amazon, it has a measly 24 ratings and 3.5 stars, which is pretty pitiful for an author who was hailed as the next great thing a decade ago. If you read through the reviews, a lot of the negative feedback is for the exact same issues he faced with City on Fire. I guess he didn't learn much, and the lack of success for his second novel proves it. 

Edited December 9 by TetRefine

[LJCC]

3 hours ago, TetRefine said:

City On Fire, by Garth Risk Hallberg. I was so excited when this novel first came out, and it had so much meat for a great story: 1970s New York, murder, subcultures, straight and gay characters, class, race. It was so highly anticipated that Hallberg received a $2 million advance for it, his debut novel.

However, the novel itself was a long, drawn-out mess that meandered aimlessly for pages on end. The author also thought he was showing what a high-brow literary turd he was by injecting all kinds of completely obscure words into the narrative that you constantly had to stop to look up to understand what was going on. I got to about page 400 and couldn't do it anymore. The novel got a very big heaping of criticism from literary critics and general readers alike, and for good reason. They also recently made it into an Apple TV+ series, and not surprisingly, it was also awful and cancelled after the first season. 

I just looked up the author on Amazon, and he came out with his second novel just this year, 9 years after this one. Looking on Amazon, it has a measly 24 ratings and 3.5 stars, which is pretty pitiful for an author who was hailed as the next great thing a decade ago. If you read through the reviews, a lot of the negative feedback is for the exact same issues he faced with City on Fire. I guess he didn't learn much, and the lack of success for his second novel proves it. 

Now I want to read this. I'm a masochist.

Edited December 9 by LJCC
Read a preview and got as far as the Prologue. It has a Christmas tree scene that's exactly 3 pages and the dragging the tree part is exactly 3 paragraphs long. wtf. I tapped out 2 mins later.