Top Ten Tuesday: Petty Reasons You’ve DNF’d a Book

Posted on by The Book Lover's Sanctuary

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

Previous Top Ten Tuesday Topics

Good evening and welcome to another TTT.

The theme this week is focused on books that we have not finished… not books that we have set aside temporarily or that we have not finished yet but books that we have made a conscious decision not to continue with.

This is a tricky one for me as I do not tend to make that decision. There are many books that I have begun, not been gripped by and put aside only to return to it later and end up loving it! These might be books that I am not emotionally ready for, or I am too tired for, or which are too close to a particular issue at that moment… or a book might be too similar to a few other books you’ve read recently and you’re just craving something different!

There are some examples however, and let’s look at a few of the reasons I may have chosen or perhaps at least been tempted not to continue with a book. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether they are petty or not!

The narrator of the audiobook sounded too American… it was an American author, writing American characters in an American setting… No, I do not understand that either! I have also heard from a number of other readers that it is a really great book!

Persistent grammar mistakes. One thing that really irks me is a persistent “Me and … went to…” construction and my inner grammar nerd shrivels a little and whispers “… and I went…”

Flat language that sounds lifeless – every sentence is subject-verb-object, subject-verb-object… every sentence is the same length…. every sentence is prosiac… There are no metaphors or techniques… nothing of interest. If you as a writer aren’t enjoying playing with your language, why do you think the reader will enjoy it?

And the flip side of number 3, the overwrought and pretentious language where nary a sentence goes by without an abstruse inarticulate metaphor!

Really bad dialogue… stilted, unnatural, featureless… When you cannot tell which character is speaking without a dialogue tag because every voice sounds the same…

“Thee” and “thou” used to make a character seem historical… usually inaccurately without understanding the difference between the subject and object forms, or that “thee”, “thou” and “you” coexisted and were used to indicate different registers like “tu” and “Lei” in modern Italian!

Related to number 6 above, and often a feature in the same bad fantasy books, we have “Ye Olde…” unless used ironically… “Ye” was never a word, it was always “the” but using the now-obsolete letter thorn “þe” which – for want of a better word – was devolved into “ye” and was adopted by various marketing campaigns to identify something as quaint.

Marketing issues: the story doesn’t know whether it is Young Adult, New Adult or Adult fiction. I do tend to read in and enjoy all three of these… but when you suddenly get heightened levels of spice or violence in what had felt like a YA novel…

In fact, tedious quantities of violence might lead to a DNF decision too. It’s not that I am squeamish, it just gets… tedious.

Irritating character names… and no, I do not think I can quantify what makes a character name irritating, but perhaps excessive numbers of characters who share similar names, or names that have unfathomable pronunciations so that, in my head, they become just “Al~” and B~”… and yet somehow I enjoyed A Memory Called Empire despite names like Three-Seagrass and Nineteen-Adze… Or the cardinal sins, familiar names containing arbitrary apostrophes L’aura and Ch’ris,!

There are of course serious and important reasons to DNF a book. The content may be triggering and I do struggle at times with that, especially if that content feels as if it is there to shock or, worse, to titillate rather than for a legitimate reasons. Rampant sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia… violence against animals and children… all absolutely valid reasons for DNFing that book.

And simply the fact that there is so little time in the world and so many books to read, no one should feel ashamed or worried or guilty about DNFing a book for any reason!

Upcoming Themes


May 7: May Flowers — Pick your own title for this one to reflect the direction you choose to go with this prompt (books with flowers on the cover, flower names in the title, characters whose names are flower names, stories involving flowers/gardeners)
May 14: Favorite Book Quotes (You can pick your favorite quotes from books, or about books! You can set a theme like quotes from books about love, friendship, hope, etc. or you can just share quotes you loved from your recent reads!)
May 21: Authors I’d Love a New Book From (These could be authors that have passed away, who have retired from writing, who have inexplicably gone quiet, or who might jut not be able to keep up with how quickly you read their books!)
May 28: Books I Was Super Excited to Get My Hands on but Still Haven’t Read
June 4: Books I Had VERY Strong Emotions About (Any emotion! Did a book make you super happy or sad? Angry? Terrified? Surprised?)
June 11: Bookish Wishes (List the top 10 books you’d love to own and include a link to your wishlist so that people can grant your wishes. Make sure you link your wishlist to your mailing address or include the email address associated with your e-reader in the list description so people know how to get the book to you. After you post, jump around the Linky and grant a wish or two if you’d like. Please don’t feel obligated to send anything to anyone!)
June 18: Books on My Summer 2024 To-Read List
June 25: Most Anticipated Books Releasing During the Second Half of 2024

Published by The Book Lover's Sanctuary

#bookblogger, teacher, father | he / him |

8 thoughts on “Top Ten Tuesday: Petty Reasons You’ve DNF’d a Book”

  5. I agree with you on the character names. I like it when authors give us hints on pronunciation of odd names – it rhymes with such and such, for example. That at least helps. If they’re foreign names, I usually Google them so I can hear how they’re pronounced. Otherwise, like you, I have to give them some kind of identifier. If it’s a made-up name with no clues on how to pronounce it…yeah, that’s just annoying.

    Happy TTT!

    Susan

    http://www.blogginboutbooks.com

    Liked by 1 person

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