The DNF (Did Not Finish) Thread

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lincoln in the Bardo.

+1

Also, Harlem Shuffle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I try really hard to finish everything (although I am starting to reconsider, with an ever expanding to be read list and no time).

The Sympathizer. I just hated it. I never saw Apocalypse Now, so maybe that was part of it. Just could not get through it. (I stopped less than half way through, then read the end, then read the last 100 pages, then read a summary someplace, so I really tried).

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. HATED it. I got stuck during the endless trying to get past the Spanish flu and can't bear the thought of all the other reboots, too.

I also started the Maid by Nita Prose this year and just could'nt get into it and it was way overdue at the library with a hefty wait list so decided to return it. I just feel like I've read so many books with neurodivergent characters figuring out the world and this felt tedious.

That book is so unrealistic. I loathed it. It made me mad to see it on Good Read's Best of 2022 ballot.

Yeah it was a weird book. I would put The Last Thing He Told me in the same category. Like, well written, some good stuff, lots of "wait this makes no sense" parts. I put both in the "how in the heck did these books get so popular?!" category. I did finish both of them though - both audiobooks. I could not get through Apples Never Fall - stopped listening about halfway through and just read a bunch of spoilers. It felt interminable.

I think with Apples Never Fall and The Last Thing He Told Me are both that book where at the end something unexpected sort of happens, but not in a good way, if that makes sense? A good suspense read, in my mind, is where you build toward a resolution and it makes sense. Vs to me, in both of those books, there is no way to foresee the ending, if that makes sense. Like the book is about apples and then at the end you introduce an orange and orange is the answer. I am not making much sense. I didn't love either book, but finished both.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I DNF all the time. I wish Goodreads had a way to track those books. I don't like that the only choices are to show us as Read or not on your shelf at all. I don't want them on my "Want to Read," so I leave them as Read. which messes up my Reading Challenge. #nerdproblems

I'm still new to Goodreads, so this might not work for what you need, but I created a Did Not Finish shelf. But maybe I didn't do it correctly because I remember using it but now it shows zero books on it.

[Anonymous]

If I dislike the book but scan through most of it or read the end to see what happens, should I still consider it a DNF?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I DNF all the time. I wish Goodreads had a way to track those books. I don't like that the only choices are to show us as Read or not on your shelf at all. I don't want them on my "Want to Read," so I leave them as Read. which messes up my Reading Challenge. #nerdproblems

I'm still new to Goodreads, so this might not work for what you need, but I created a Did Not Finish shelf. But maybe I didn't do it correctly because I remember using it but now it shows zero books on it.

That's how I do it, too. You can set any of your personal shelves to be "exclusive" which will mean when you add something to that shelf, it gets removed from any other shelves you have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Midnight Library

I kept reading that but can understand. If it was longer I would have stopped

I think I finished it, but only out of stubbornness. It was awful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Crying in H Mart
The Seven Husbands of I forget the rest of the title
A Gentleman in Moscow
Caste

I finished all of these, BUT:
- Only finished Crying in H Mart because it was a gift.
- Spending the time to finish The Seven Husbands was a mistake. Never got any better.
- A Gentleman in Moscow - I acknowledge that it was work and the beginning was the strongest part, but I did enjoy this book.
- Caste - Only finished because I needed to discuss it. I never understood the hype about this book. None of it seemed very original to me.

The book I'm currently not finishing is Celeste Ng's Our Missing Hearts. It feels very contrived.

I'm feeling much more empowered by this thread not to finish in the future!

[Anonymous]

I almost always finish books - it has to be TRULY unreadable for me to just stop and say eff it. The only one recently (within the last 10 years) was 50 Shades of Gray. I just couldn't, it was SO badly written. I kept wondering, are people REALLY getting through this? And I'm not a snob, I actually read the Harry Potter books around the same time and thoroughly enjoyed them.

[Anonymous]

I just put down Head Long. (or maybe it's Headlong).

I just "remove" my DNF books from my Goodreads shelves. I do think there's a way to shelve them as such on the app.

I just realized that I have been using GR since 2010! It was terrible then, just horrible in terms of user experience, but it's marginally better now. I do really like having a place to keep track of what I've read/what I want to read, and then seeing what my friends are reading to get ideas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I almost always finish books - it has to be TRULY unreadable for me to just stop and say eff it. The only one recently (within the last 10 years) was 50 Shades of Gray. I just couldn't, it was SO badly written. I kept wondering, are people REALLY getting through this? And I'm not a snob, I actually read the Harry Potter books around the same time and thoroughly enjoyed them.

My sister handed down the 50 Shades trilogy, and I couldn't make it through the first one. I thought maybe the appeal was hot sex, but I scanned through looking for that and didn't find it. Maybe I totally missed it. I donated them.

[Anonymous]

Little Fires Everywhere

Where the Crawdad Sings

I don’t finish books often but I seriously tried with these two. Huge mistake.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I try really hard to finish everything (although I am starting to reconsider, with an ever expanding to be read list and no time).

The Sympathizer. I just hated it. I never saw Apocalypse Now, so maybe that was part of it. Just could not get through it. (I stopped less than half way through, then read the end, then read the last 100 pages, then read a summary someplace, so I really tried).

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. HATED it. I got stuck during the endless trying to get past the Spanish flu and can't bear the thought of all the other reboots, too.

I also started the Maid by Nita Prose this year and just could'nt get into it and it was way overdue at the library with a hefty wait list so decided to return it. I just feel like I've read so many books with neurodivergent characters figuring out the world and this felt tedious.

That book is so unrealistic. I loathed it. It made me mad to see it on Good Read's Best of 2022 ballot.

Yeah it was a weird book. I would put The Last Thing He Told me in the same category. Like, well written, some good stuff, lots of "wait this makes no sense" parts. I put both in the "how in the heck did these books get so popular?!" category. I did finish both of them though - both audiobooks. I could not get through Apples Never Fall - stopped listening about halfway through and just read a bunch of spoilers. It felt interminable.

I think with Apples Never Fall and The Last Thing He Told Me are both that book where at the end something unexpected sort of happens, but not in a good way, if that makes sense? A good suspense read, in my mind, is where you build toward a resolution and it makes sense. Vs to me, in both of those books, there is no way to foresee the ending, if that makes sense. Like the book is about apples and then at the end you introduce an orange and orange is the answer. I am not making much sense. I didn't love either book, but finished both.

I think I understand what you are saying. Like, if you are reading a murder mystery and the murderer turns out to be someone that was not a character in the book until the last chapter and there was no way to know they existed?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I DNF any new book - mainly if I don't like the writing style (I didn't even make it past the epigraph of Emily Henry's Beach Read "you are, so perfectly, my favorite person" barf).

BUT, if it's a classic or part of the "canon", I will usually try to finish. Sometimes I am surprised if I stick it out how much I end up liking a book. Or even if it's not a personal favorite, I will appreciate things about the writing, character development, etc.

Oh same! I just got called out for this by my staff yesterday. But it was just too much.
A Gentleman in Moscow...I went with it for a while after seeing the author at a thing, but I just didn't really see a climax in sight for this one.
The It Girl was supposed to be all suspense and it dragged so much that I no longer cared who the killer was. This book could have been an email.
The Family Chao lost me when the location actually exists in Wisconsin, and Haven is like, 2 roads and a golf course, so literally none of it could have happened.
The Shimmering State was really highly regarded, and I got bored.

It took me a long time to allow myself to give up on books, and my life has greatly improved

We need another thread for books you did finish but wish you hadn’t. The It Girl was the worst. An entire book of nothing happening! That author — is it Ruth Ware? Too lazy to look it up — is so hit or miss for me.

[Anonymous]

Where the Crawdad Sings

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley (was charmed by another book but this one wasn't it for me)

Gentleman in Moscow (read after Rules of Civility which I loved)

Mary Jane (a book rec'd to me after I said I loved Daisy and the Six)

However, I do find that I have more patience listening to books than reading them. Especially non-fiction.

I’ve tried The Paris Apartment twice, but DNF. I tried Mary Jane, also DNF.

Don’t go back! I forced myself to finish The Paris Apartment…and I was furious how it ended.

Original poster of the list and I can't tell you how much I appreciate you two tuning in. It totally validates my DNF gut instincts!