DNF Guilt

Last week sometime I DNF’d (did not finish) a book, the first of 2021.  What book doesn’t really matter, but it got me to thinking of the whys of not finishing a book.  I stopped finishing books I wasn’t into way back in college, but back then most of those books not finished were for classes and I did pretty well without finishing Joyce’s Ulysses and Herman’s Moby Dick. It’s only been in the last few months that I’ve decided that there’s way too many books out there that I want to read to waste my time on a book that just wasn’t for me.  In 2020 I DNF’d only five books, I only know this because I went back to look at my reading journal, but I don’t think I missed out on anything not finishing them. However, that doesn’t stop me from having DNF guilt.

Whenever I stop reading a book, for any reason, I have this overwhelming sense of guilt that just presses down on me.  I go into an almost period or mourning where I cannot pick up another book.  Last week, I DNF’d a book and then didn’t read anything for two days.  In my head my thoughts swirled around why does another book deserve to be read when I didn’t give this one a fair shot at it’s complete life.  Yes, that’s completely insane but nonetheless those were the thoughts that swirled around my brain and every time I tried to read something else, I would put it down after a sentence or two.  I couldn’t read. And then, like all mourning periods, it came to an end and I picked up a book again.

But during that short bout of guild induced mourning I got to thinking as to the why do I, at least not finish a book.  It comes down to two main reasons: the quality of writing and the characters.  Every other sin I can forgive.  No plot, if the writing is good and the characters compelling, not a problem.  I don’t have any triggers.  So a book full of senseless violence and gratuitous sex, yes please.  I will read the darkest of the dark and gleefully eat my beef jerky as I read about a serial killer skinning their victims alive to just their flesh as art, stretched across a canvas a la Cassandra from Doctor Who.  But crappy writing, which usually is just lazy writing, and dull or sanctimonious main characters are sins that cannot be forgiven.

Why do you DNF a book?  Does a book have to commit multiple sins in order to get the ax?  Life is too short to read bad books