What were your last few DNFs? And why?

[IceIceBabyBump]

> The Witches of Vardo by Anna Bergman. I got to a point in the book where the characters were just walking between building every day. I could also feel heroics brewing which I hate in books.

> Atonement by Ian McEwan. I got 60-pages in and nothing had happened yet. Dense description of bugger all. Boring.

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.

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!

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

@InTheCludgie One of my new year's mantras is that life's too short for shit books.

My times too valuable to spend mercilessly limping through a book I'm not enjoying.

It's been a pretty revolutionary mindset TBH. I used to read everything through to the bitter end like there'd be a GCSE exam on it at some point. But why?! All I've done is wasted my own time and happiness!!

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 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.

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

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.

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

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🤔

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.

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

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

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

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.

I’m trying to read all the Booker books but I just couldn’t get through The Famished Road by Ben Okri. I’m not great with some forms of magical realism (although loved Midnight’s Children) and I just couldn’t find any way in to care about any of it.

Still Life by Sarah Winman. I only read about 10 pages, there was just no punctuation and it bugs me.

The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell. I read much more of this. If I remember, it's written in parts so I read the first. The second just got too weird.

The Year of the Locust, Terry Hayes. Really enjoyed his previous book I am Pilgrim but holy heck, this one dragged, and dragged, and dragged and then dragged some more. I just couldn't carry on. Read well over half of it as well.

Yeah "heroics brewing" wasn't exactly a clear phrase on my part 😂 I felt that there would soon be castle walls being scaled, sword fights, rescues of dusky maidens. That sort of thing.

Thanks for asking my recommendations!
I'm really enjoying Mary Lawson's books at the moment. I've only recently discovered her work but I'm going through her back catalogue at speed 😅

I really enjoy melancholic, atmospheric, quite depressing books. Some that stand out:
> "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry
> "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" by Shirley Jackson
> "Remains of the Day" by Kazuo Ishiguro
> "Elmet" by Fiona Mozley
> "Eileen" by Ottessa Moshfegh
> "What I Have Loved" by Siri Hustvedt
> "The Luminaries" by Elanor Catton

All of Hanya Yanagihara's work. "The People in the Trees" get a bit boring in places but its the only book I've ever cried at, and it left me feeling completely hollowed out.

All of Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche's work though not read her latest book yet.

Claire Kilroy's books are strange but good.

Claire Fuller's books (apart from "The Memory of Animals" which was really badly paced) are very engaging though she does have a tendency for big crescendo endings which I'm not too keen on.

I think "Still Life" is the worst book I've ever attempted to read. It was as though it was written by a child. Lots of stunted dialogue with "said" as the only verb to describe what's going on. Lots of:

"How are you?" said Maureen
"I am well, thank you. Did you manage to find your gloves?" said Joanne.
"Yes, they were under the sofa" said Maureen.
"Oh, that's great news" Joanne said.

Jesus fucking Christ. Avoiding "said" every bastard sentence was, AFAIR, one of the fundamentals of primary school English lessons.
I was tasked to read "Still Life" for book club and it genuinely made me angry how shit it was 😂

Poor Girls by Clare Whitfield - bored Brighton waitress runs away and joins gang of female shoplifters in 20s London (based on the real life Forty Elephants gang). It started well, and the descriptions of the gang's methods was really interesting, but it wasn't well written enough to engage me. The characters all seemed too modern and I lost track of who was who.

The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman - girl gets mixed up with troupe of boy actors in Elizabethan London, it ends badly. Again interesting topic and also based on real-life events, but I couldn't get to grips with or empathise with any of the characters. There's also a lot about a random bird-worshipping cult living out in the London marshes which I couldn't make a lot of sense of. Really wanted to like it but just couldn't stick to it.

Both library books so no great loss!

Actress by Anne Enright. I kept plodding on hoping that I would start to feel something for the characters! Then realised I didn’t really know anything about them and couldn’t care less about them either.

The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey - so basic! Like writing by numbers and I didn’t enjoy it at all.

Barbara Comyns - The Doll House . I just started to find all the characters annoying and unbelievable. It's a short book, but it should have been shorter.

Why on earth would you do that?

I also didn't finish this book. Started it twice and I very rarely DNF a book.

Well, most writing advice will tell you to use the simplest speech markers, or none, where it's clear who's speaking, and definitely to avoid alternatives -- what is being said shouldn't need to be reinforced by telling the reader how it's said.

'RUN!!!' she shouted loudly. 

'Psst!' she whispered in a low voice. 

'Come over here and kiss me', she purred sexily. 

Etc.

(Having said that, I have never read Still Life...)