You wanted to read the book, you were excited to crack it open, you came into it with good faith and anticipation… but you ended up dnf-ing it. Which book and why?
Mine was The Maid by Nita Prose. It was for my book club and looked like a fun murder mystery. Instead I got instant manic-pixie-dream-neurodivergent-girl vibes, and I noped out before the crime scene was even found.
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Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’
Had no idea the book is written as a series of letters from Harker to his beau
Not an easy book to read unless you enjoy such formats
Kite runner, 7 pages, and I knew it wasn’t my type of read.
i think it was a few pages in. i have two that i dnf’d super quick, i think one was called hangman (a thriller) and the other was if you tell by gregg olsen. the first one i couldn’t get past the immature nicknames of a 40 year old detective, he also got real grossed out by shit and called it poop or something a 12 year old would say and that really annoyed me. gregg olsen i practically dnf’d after the third sentence. that is one book i physically hate, just so much hatred!! it was just god awful and honestly if it wasn’t a library book i would have ripped it into a million pieces. that guy should never write a single thing ever
Probably Dharma Bums, which I read one chapter of and found very self-obsessed and boring. There have been many that I’ve unintentionally DNFd after about ~50 pages, because life gets distracting and ADHD makes it hard to remember to read at the times when I can.
3 or 4 chapters into Warriors of the Altaii. Something about the rationalizing of slavery between characters turned me all the way off. It was a very early attempt by Robert Jordan at writing a novel, but no thank you.
The poppy wars. I read the first book, but will never touch the sequels(which to me still counts as I did not finish the story). Everyone recommended it, said it was amazing and to it’s credit it’s very original, but it sucks. The author handles her characters in the worst ways possible. Example a character bullies the protagonist, dies, then amazing he survived, and there is this moment were it’s implying “he has powers” and he will end up friend or lovers with the protagonist but nope dead again in 50 pages. Far from my only issue with the book but it’s just poor story telling.
The Brothers Karamazov. To be clear, it did take about 80 pages to put it down, which is relatively early to the length of the book. I also want to mention that it wasn’t the book itself that made me put it down, but rather the version I was reading (English translation by Larissa and Richard). I’m a native Russian speaker, but read very slowly - hence my preference for a translation. I felt that this version tried to literally translate Russian nuances to English (a very difficult effort, I’ll admit), and the byproduct was a lot of repetitive and confusing text that just wasn’t enjoyable to read. It made me decide to work on my reading efficiency in Russian and to reattempt the book in the original language when ready.
idk how soon it exactly was, but the alchemist
My now ex-wife wanted me to read a book written by some preacher, something to the effect of Gods purpose.
Guy started with “No one knows what Gods purpose is” and then proceeded to tell me why he knows what Gods purpose is.
Didn’t get past the first paragraph.
James Joyce - Ulysses. I was 17 or so. I tried but it went well over my head. I mean … it was in a different galaxy. Haven’t tried it since, though I’m thinking that maybe I should one day before I die.
I was on a high school fencing team, and I took it seriously. Three pages into Catcher in the Rye that jackass Holden had the fucking gall to complain about everyone being mad at him for losing all their fencing gear. I was so mad I stopped reading and never went back.
“The Cheerleaders” by Kara Thomas I didn’t get far at all when there were text message pics I stopped reading and just I couldn’t. I’m not saying it’s bad just definitely not the kind of book I like. I like fantasy, historical fiction, dystopian type stuff not really modern stories. Also I think its popular on TikTok which isn’t bad necessarily but from what I’ve seen TikTok popular books I usually don’t enjoy maybe its because they’re too modern and I don’t enjoy modern books because its just too relevant I want a book that transports me elsewhere to a place completely different from my own.
Also there was wayyyy too many characters all up front I was getting so confused on who was who. Seriously like 20 different names going on right away.
‘12 rules for life’. It was a gift. I tried and couldn’t get through the prelude. Too much self grandizing.
15 pages or so. “Raise high the roof beam, carpenters” I liked catcher in the rye and thought I would try another Salinger
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. So many people hyped it up to me and I really did give it a go, but after the first couple chapters I just couldn’t keep with it. Also the third book in the 50 shades trilogy. 1 and 2 I got through just fine but for some reason I couldn’t manage 3.