A celebration of hating things
To DNF or not to DNF?
The older I get, the more I realise how little time I have left to read everything I want to read. The first time I made the connection between my average no. of books read in a year (25-30) and the number of books on my TBR (to-be-read) list, which currently stands at 582, I was horrified by the insurmountability of this exponentially-growing figure. My eighty-seven year old grandmother is in two book clubs, which both meet weekly, amounting to 104 books per year, and she tells me that she still feels like she doesn’t have time to read everything she wants to read, and let me tell you - she is probably the most well-read person I know. I feel that this is a problem that will never go away.
With this in mind, there is a growing debate online of whether or not to abandon books midway-through. Naturally, I think most of us want to finish something that we’ve started - or perhaps this is just the sunk cost fallacy at work again? - and if we’re already a good chunk into a book we’re not enjoying, there’s an obligation to see it through to the end, if only to increase your numbers for the year and at least get the arbitrary glory of a step further towards your yearly reading goal. But it may just be me who holds such worth in these meaningless figures!
Why don’t we count how many films or television shows we’ve watched in a year and applaud those numbers the same way we do with books?
I think it was Zadie Smith who said that we shouldn’t consider reading to be any more of a ‘moral’ activity than we do watching TV or a film, and I’ve always found it interesting that we celebrate finishing a certain number of books while attributing a certain degree of shame and laziness to bingeing 24 episodes of a TV show in a week.
But I digress - what I am curious about, is how strongly people feel about abandoning a book you’re not enjoying and marking it ‘DNF’.
In case you aren’t chronically online or deeply embedded in Booktube/Bookstagram/Booktok, this abbreviation stands for ‘did not finish’, and has crudely become used as a verb among online book content creators, e.g. “I DNF’ed this book”.
For me personally, I think I can only count my DNF books of recent years on one hand. For the most part, this is because I am very picky with the books I choose to read, and these days will generally only pick up titles that I’ve had recommended to me at least twice, whether by word-of-mouth or from having read reviews or heard positive buzz online. Gone are the days of browsing in Waterstones and selecting a book based on an attractive cover or an appealing blurb. With so little time and so many books out there, it has become too much of a risk for me to go in without having collected a balanced portfolio of recommendations and background information.
My general rule is that if I don’t feel ‘grabbed’ by a book in the first 50 pages, I sack it off. Thankfully, because of my rigorous selection process and carefully curated TBR list, this rarely happens.
Now, when you’re part of a book club, this adds another element to the mix. It happened to me recently with our latest choice. The blurb sounded great, the reviews and ratings were generally excellent, I was hooked by the premise. However, I knew in the first 50 pages that I wasn’t going to enjoy it. But, as I am also plagued with FOMO, I chose to persevere, hoping that it might improve. Reader, it did not. I felt just as irritated by the characters and the general style of writing right up to the bitter end. I would almost say that I hated it, but hate is such a strong word and would suggest that it had some kind of emotional impact on me, which can actually be the sign of a good book in my opinion, but it did not.
Obviously, I also wanted to finish the book so that I could participate in the discussion at our next meeting. I knew that a couple of the other members had enjoyed it, and I was looking forward to providing an alternative POV to them, and discovering what they loved about the book, hopefully without shitting all over it.
Weirdly enough though, it actually felt good to dislike something that everyone else seemed to enjoy. It’s always empowering to be reminded of one’s individualism at such moments. Oscar Wilde wrote,
“Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.”
I think the point of being in a book club is to have interesting discussions and hear new ideas from other members, so it would be pretty boring if we all agreed on everything all of the time.
So what I’m saying is, 9 times out of 10, I would agree that life is too short to force yourself to carry on reading something that you’re not enjoying, and you should abandon and find something else.
But maybe, once in a while, we should all push through the urge to DNF and see if we can prove ourselves wrong, and if not that, then at least provide an alternate perspective and challenge each other.
