TTT | Petty Reasons You’ve DNF’d a Book

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly topic hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week she provides a topic, and you are free to use that topic and/or variations of that topic to make your top ten list. A full list of the weekly themes can be found here. This week’s topic is petty reasons I DNF a book, and I feel like this was made for me. I try not to be mean but lately any constructive criticism I give a book is me hating the book.

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Historical Inaccuracies: I’m not talking about creative liberties with the material author’s have to work with. My issues come when authors try to shove in a story that doesn’t (and/or shouldn’t) fit. The best example of this is The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont. The inaccuracies of the Christie family were so wild that it kept pulling me out of the story. It was unfortunate because the story itself, a woman locked in a Magdalene Laundry forced to give up her child, is an important story to tell. Trying to force the story with the disappearance of Agatha Christie did both women a disservice.

Writing Quality: Everyone probably has different ideas of what this entails, for me it’s usually around really cringe writing. Something that reads like middle school writing falls into this. Actually, Forth Wing fell into this for me (even though I did finish it) because the characters were in their mid to late twenties but read like they were in high school.

Power Imbalance: Any romantic relationship where there’s a power imbalance just gives me the ick.

College Setting (Graduate student): It sounds odd but as someone who works at a college library and went to grad school (twice), I have a difficult time when authors write with this age group or in this setting. Unless you’ve been through it, it’s difficult to understand, let alone write, about such a weird time period where you’re working but you’re a student and you’re making no money and you’re taken seriously but also not. It’s just a lot of dichotomies all at once.

Respect the No: This is for either men or women. When there’s a romance and character A rejects character B, character B should gather up their winnings and peace out. Don’t try to convince, complain, stalk, just leave!!

Repetition: If an author uses a word or phrase too much, I’m out. Even if an author uses punctuation too much, I find it annoying (I’m looking at one author who shall remain nameless who cannot help herself in using the em dash in every single sentence).

Info-Dumping: Yes, an author has to set up the story and world, but I don’t need pages upon pages of world building.

Spoon-Feeding: I don’t need the author to tell me the main points of the book every few pages. I’m good thanks.

First-Person: I’m actually reading a first-person novel right now, but the only reason I’m okay with it is that there are 4 point-of-views. I prefer third person narration.

Boredem: If I just don’t care about the plot or characters, then it’s a DNF. This happened with The Atlas Six which really upset me because I was so excited to read this book. I had read 43%, looked up and asked myself why I was continuing.

Bonus, Too Heavy: I live with my grandma (88) and we both read a lot. But lately she’ll quit a book if it’s too heavy to hold up. We’re trying to find a book holder or lap desk to use.

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