DNF and What That Means to Your TBR By Theresa Gauthier

 

    Every way of life, every job, every small group of people, uses a terminology of their own. Sometimes a unique between-two-people shorthand, and sometimes a more universally used term. (LOL. IDK. Etc.) For readers there are several. Most readers know that TBR means To Be Read. We list the books we want to read, the books we find intriguing so that one day we'll get around to them. This can be a written list or a physical stack of books. Sometimes it's both and a book graduates from the list to the stack! There's another one readers use for books they just can't read. DNF means Did Not Finish. 

    Some readers are easy going with this term. Others hate the idea of not finishing a book and stress about it.

    When I was a young reader, I couldn’t imagine not finishing a book I’d started. Books were wonderful! The stories, the characters, the settings—I was certain I’d always finish any book I’d started. 

Time passed and now I realize it’s not possible to read every book I want to read. It’s not. Even if I read a book a day, I couldn’t keep pace with the rate of publication of books that sound good. 

There’s the rub. Books that sound good. They seem like they'll be good. I scour bookshelves and read articles and keep abreast of all the doings in publishing. A lot of books are on my radar years before they get published. I hear all sorts of opinions and synopses and intriguing bits of marketing or word of mouth that make me desperate to read a long list of books. Some of those books will be—to me—unreadable. Why?  

There are so many reasons why a book may not be the right book for you—or perhaps just not the right book for you right now. It’s possible that if you put the book down and read other things for awhile and come back to it, you’ll be able to settle into the story. It’s also possible that the book will never work for you. Sometimes it’s the tone, sometimes it’s the way the author writes—word choice, sentence structure—sometimes a book just doesn’t do what you need it to do. My mother, for example, doesn’t like a book that makes her tense. Thrillers are out of the question. She doesn’t want to be “on the edge of her seat” so she avoids those books. Some people love thrillers. It’s like roller coasters. Some people love ‘em and some people hate ‘em. 

Reasons to designate a book as DNF:

1. It doesn’t do what it says on the tin:

There’s an unfortunate inability of some publishing companies to put good blurbs out about their books. Like a movie trailer that gives you all the punchlines and makes you believe a movie is so funny, but when you see it you realize those were the only jokes in the film—some book blurbs bear no resemblance to the books upon which they appear. I have fallen into this trap. I remember reading a book (I won't name it.) and I thought it was a bit more magical, a bit more light-hearted. Instead I met characters I didn't much like in situations I didn't really find all that compelling. It happens a lot. You pick up a book expecting it to be funny and it’s serious. You’re expecting rom-com and get comedy of errors. Whatever the reason, just stop reading it and find something that suits you.

2. Sometimes you read a book that you adore. For whatever reason, it struck all the right chords as you read it, reread it, and recommended it to as many people as you could. Then the sequel is released. Your anticipation and excitement lead you to expect the same experience. Surely, the second book will be just as wonderful. Then you read it and are dismayed to find that there is no similarity, not even a faint echo of the story you treasured.  In this case, putting the book down—even for a short time—will help you decide if you want to adjust your expectations or if the book isn’t quite your cup of tea.

3. You select a book everyone is talking about. It has the highest marks in every review. Everyone everywhere is singing its praises. You try to read it and all you can think is this book is nothing like people said it would be. Maybe it even triggers some anxiety or traumatic reaction. Anything triggering needs to be put aside. Either you can talk to people who’ve read it and try to find out if there’s a lot of that sort of thing, or if it’s just the once scene. If it’s one scene, you can potentially skip it and still enjoy the rest of the book. If it’s not, or if you’re far too triggered, then DNF. If it’s just that the book isn’t good to you, don’t force yourself to read it. I’ve done that. I read a book it seemed everyone loved. (Again, I won't name it. Maybe someday I'll post about the books that didn't suit me.) They all talked about it and praised it, and it made all the right lists, won all the right awards. I hated the book. I saw through the plot, I saw things that led me to be certain that we were overlooking some serious police work for it to work out as the author wrote it—it just seemed impossible to me that this story could in reality turn out as written. I appear to be in the minority, and, yes, I finished it. I regret the waste of my time.

4. Maybe you found some backlist title of a favorite author and you dive in pleased that you found it. When you read it, it seems contrived, anticlimactic, and you wonder why. Authors get better as they write. Maybe their first novel wasn’t as wonderful as their most recent. Maybe it’s just that the characters or situations don’t appeal to you. Don’t beat yourself up about it; just label it DNF.

5. You find a book some celebrity wrote. Not a famous author, but an actor or an athlete or an influencer, and it’s several years old. You never heard of it, but you’re intrigued so you try to read it. You hate it—either for clear reasons (poorly plotted, bad dialogue) or for less tangible reasons (the story goes nowhere, the characters are indistinguishable from each other or maybe just too generic) no worries. Just put it on your DNF list. 

There are plenty of well-written, well-loved books that may not be quite what you expected. They may be of a subject matter you don’t really find interesting, or address topics that you find challenging to read. It’s perfectly okay to put a book aside. 

Any given book may not be for you at all, or it may not be for you right now.

Keep in mind that any book on your DNF list can be revisited at any time Perhaps your mood, your circumstances, your outlook on life or some life experience you’ve had in the interim will make the book if not a five star than perhaps a 3.5 or 4 star solid read.

Whatever the reason, and whether or not you return to the title and discover it’s merits later, giving yourself permission not to finish something that you’re really not enjoying is better for your sanity than slogging through a book you just can’t enjoy. Move on. There are plenty of other books on the shelves.