What were your last few DNFs? And why?

At first I dnf'ed All Fours. The got it again while on recent holiday and I devoured it, I was in a more relaxed state of mind and really enjoyed it.

Any book recs, in that case? I ask because I enjoyed reading your OP so thought you may have taste. Not sure I know what "heroics brewing' really mean but have an idea I think

A friend read that. She stuck it through to the end, as it got progressively more bonkers. Every time we met up I'd ask her how it was going and cry with laughter at her updates.

Later we found an interview with the author, which I felt explained a lot. Let's just say, there wasn't much of a line between the author and the character

Please don’t give up on this! I was tempted to give up too but soooo thankful I didn’t it’s the best book I’ve ever read

I loved Wise Children, Atonement and All the Colours of the Dark haha!
DNF Suite Française. Too many characters. I felt the translation was clunky.
As someone upthread said, life’s too short for shit books.
SF is a hugely popular book and lived by most of my friends. It just wasn’t for me.

If we were villians.
Just boring, poorly researched and absolutely not a single character was likeable.
It was recommended in my local Waterstones, as was another DNF🤔

No.
Mind you the two authors I mentioned are no longer alive.

No.
These days, I mainly read YA fantasy or "romantasy" 😏 that has thousands of rave reviews, from teenage fan girls and bookstagrammers out for a freebie.
The authors and publishers aren't likely to care much about one negative review, from a reader who falls well outside their desired demographic.

Do any of you ever let the authors or publishing house know that it was a dnf?

All the colours of the dark by Chris Whitaker. I thought id love it. The plot seemed right up my street. It was so difficult to read, I gave up after about 100 pages. It was like it hadn't been edited or that he had a certain word count to reach so used 50 words to describe something he could have used 3 for, alot.

Sweet Caress by William Boyd. Sad to say because I like his writing a lot but Amory didn't really ring true as a lead character. And there wasn't the usual humour.

Never Anyone But You by Rupert Thomson. A novel based on the story of two real life French women, who were a lesbian couple, who were involved with the surrealist movement, and then lived in Jersey during the occupation, and performed their own acts of resistance.

So far so interesting but for the first part it was just a series of brief events and the protagonist being treated abusively by her lover. I decided id rather read a biography and see their actual works of art.

All Fours by Miranda July. Felt sure i would love it but I gave up about 100 pages or so in as it was getting progressively weirder and weirder.

I would never DNF books and would see them through to the bitter end but with a wishlist over 600 books long, life really is too short

Money by Martin Amis and Wise Children by Angela Carter.

Money - just didn't seem to be going anywhere, no hook, no interesting characters.
Wise Children - again going nowhere.

I got them because I thought I should read more classics, but no..

Liked Atonement though!

The Black Bird Oracle by Deborah Harkness. It felt to me as if it had been written by a different author than the previous four books in the series. I didn't feel that the relationship between the male & female MC's was convincing. It was also riddled with stupid errors. I'm not sure if it was badly written or badly edited.

House of Sky and Breath by Sarah J Maas. I enjoyed both her YA fantasy series and expected to love this. The trilogy was touted as being adult, but I actually found it more juvenile. I suspect calling it adult was only down to the drug references and the language. I struggled through the first book in the trilogy, reached about one third of the way through this, the second book, and felt that I'd had enough of the the whiny immature female MC and the teenage comic strip violence.