There was a time when I suffered through boring storylines, repulsive characters, predictable twists, and cheesy, cliché writing for the sole reason that I had to see something I had started through to the end. I was young, healthy, and childless. It was nothing to waste an hour or two plodding through an inferior novel or novella. Time and mental energy, once upon a time I had plenty of them.
Those were the days. I think the only things that would have made me ditch a book back then were reprehensible grammar and outright blasphemy. Thankfully, I never really encountered any blatantly poor or sacrilegious writing until I started reading ebooks.
These days, however, it doesn’t take much for me to quit (even rage-quit) a book, and I can’t even really say that I have lofty standards. My go-to reading is cozy. More discriminating readers would probably call it fluff. And yet! I find myself DNF-ing quite a bit nowadays.
DNF, something I first encountered when I joined the bookstagram community, is a term and concept that were quite alien to me in my early years as a reader. By the time I first read it being loosely bandied about by seasoned bookstagrammer, I was ready to pick it up and have a turn at spouting it off myself.
As I got older and became responsible for more and more living beings (children, cats, and plants), I found that I no longer had the luxury of time that I didn’t even know I had. Doesn’t it suck when realization only hits when something is no longer around or valid? I thought I was busy with work and whatnot when I was single and childless. I just had no idea. I saw a meme that said motherhood means never being able to sit for more than 30 seconds ever again. Hyperbole or truth? You be the judge (only if you’re a mother).
So leisure became a priceless commodity and I had to be wise about spending the little time I could scare up for it. That’s when DNF became a viable option for me.
In bookstagram, this is a question that gets asked periodically: what makes you DNF?
Personally, my possible reasons are:
– The story is a poor derivative of an overworked formula.
– It’s a trope I don’t care for, e.g. big age gap (forget that all my crushes are now at least 20 years my junior 😁).
– The writing grates. It could either be too painfully sophomoric (staccato kindergarten-type sentences in a non-children’s book) or too obnoxiously and unnecessarily highfalutin (ten-dollar words one after another).
– The start is too slow that it fails to engage me in so many pages. I begin to think it’s probably not going to pick up.
– Plus the two other reasons I mentioned before: problematic grammar and demonic themes.
– Oh, and there’s another reason I actually DNFed a book back in the day. I DNFed it so hard I chucked it against the wall (and then worried that I destroyed it; I’d just borrowed it from the library). The book was Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. My reason was that I was too dumb for it. I did try reading it again after college, and I still hadn’t mustered enough additional smarts to comprehend whatever the heck it was talking about.
Those are my reasons, but what could drive others to DNF? True to the custom of any bookstagrammer worth her salt, I posed this query in one of my posts as the ubiquitous QOTD. Take a look at the replies I got. 🙂
All valid reasons, I say. What about you? What would make you DNF? Or are you the type to always F? That sounds off, but you know what I mean. Hoping to see your answers.
This Small Life 
I agree! Poor writing is too distracting for me to continue reading.
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