My Thoughts on DNFing a Book
DNF = Did Not Finish
Spoilers for Divergent Series by Veronica Roth.
The first book I ever remember “DNFing”, was Allegiant by Veronica Roth. I remember being 13 years old, and so excited to see how Trish’s story ends. The Divergent series was my favorite at the time, surpassing books like The Hunger Games and City of Bones. However, that is not the case today, as I am beyond excited for the 5th Hunger Games book and am planning a City of Bones reread while my bookmark is still on page 266 of Allegiant from 2013.
I remember 11 years ago, I went to scan ahead to see how many pages were left in the book. I meant only to find the last page and read the number at the top. However, tragedy struck, and I found myself staring at a page that started with “I go to see her body...” and I screamed. I believe once I had figured out that in roughly 200 pages my favorite character would die, I threw the book across the room and never picked it back up. Well, except to bookmark my page and put it on the shelf. It has sat on that shelf for 10 years and I have no plans to finish it. Honestly, I would have gotten rid of it long ago if the rest of the series hadn’t been such an integral part of my early reading journey.
As I flowed in and out of reading for the next many years, I only recall one other book I did not finish, and that was Reached by Ally Condie. While I have gathered how Allegiant ends, and will never finish it because of that, I have no idea what happens in Reached and no real recollection of why I stopped reading. I believe I just found it boring.
When I got older and started taking reading more seriously, I felt I could no longer DNF a book because I was bored. I had dedicated time to the book and wanted to at least see it through. This has led to me reading some truly awful books all the way through. In 2023 I rated 7 books 1 star and 24 books 2 stars. That means 28% of books I read last year, I didn’t even like. Now some are better two stars than others, and some I may have been feeling extra negative when I read, but overall, that feels like a massive waste of time.
My issue? By the time I figure out I don’t like a book, I feel like I am in too deep. Recently there has been 1 book I have DNFed and that is Song of Achilles. The book was a gift and I knew it wasn’t my taste in books, and after reading the first chapter 3 times, many months apart and once as an audiobook, I realized I was going to put myself in a huge book slump if I kept on pressing. It felt like a failure. Someone had bought me a book, I had spent probably an hour trying to read it, and now I was just going to get rid of it. Not even a tick on my Goodreads yearly goal to show for my time and effort.
My goal? I have a fear, that I believe is largely shared in the book community, that I will never have enough time to read all the books I want to. I'm not sure why it’s a fear, because it’s absolutely true, but alas. I take things like my Goodreads goal and reading challenges very seriously, if the challenge is to read a book in French, and I said I would, I’m suffering through the book even though I won't understand a word. My goal is to change this mindset. I want to be able to say, “Hey this sucks” and go buy a different book to meet my goals. I want to be able to say, “I hate this, I don’t need to keep going” and not feel like I wasted my time. “I now know if I don’t like a book, and it only took me 3 hours to figure that out instead of 6. That’s 3 hours to put towards a better book.” If I ordered food and hated it, I wouldn’t think it was a waste of money to get different food or a waste of time, because I need food to survive and I want to enjoy it. My goal is to feel that way about reading.