… but that’s not usually my attitude to books.
Normally, I’m a pretty picky reader. If a book hasn’t hooked me by about the fifty page mark (and that’s if I’m feeling really generous, yikes), it’ll be out on its ear and unlikely to be given a second chance to redeem itself.
Recently, though, something weird seems to have happened to me and I’m not 100% sure how I feel about the development.
I’ve ploughed on through two books (who shall remain nameless) that I wasn’t partlicularly enjoying. I refused to give up on them until I made it to their very ends. I stubbornly kept turning their pages. I kept telling myself that things would get better and fall into place. I kept feeling FOMO (of what I don’t actually know) flood my veins each time I considered DNFing them.
One book felt worth the struggle, but only just. The other really, really didn’t.
And these reading experiences have left my reader’s heart and my bookish insticts confused and shaken. I’m not used to feeling unsure about whether to stick books out. Reading decisions are one of the only things in my life I don’t tend to overthink and it’s weirdly unsettling to have that confidence disrupted.
Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe it’ll shake up my entrenched reading habits and force me to grow and change in unexpected ways. Maybe it means I need to challenge myself.
Maybe it’s just overthinking.
I guess I’ll have to wait and see.
• How do you decide when to stop reading a book? • Have you ever regretted sticking with a book? • Have you ever been thankful you didn’t give up on one? • Do you find changes to your reading habits disruptive in unexpected ways? •
Joanna Corbet 
I used to feel like I had to finish everything I started reading but a few years ago I adopted the policy that “Life is too short to read bad books”. It’s been very freeing! Around 50 pages is generally my marker too for knowing if a book is worth it for me or not. Recently though I read an entire novel because I thought it surely would get better and then I really wanted to quit but I was 200 pages in and felt like it would be a waste of my reading time if I quit so far into it. In retrospect, I should have quit.
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I feel exactly the same – life is way too short for us to battle through books we don’t like and aren’t getting anything from! I’m normally okay with DNFing a book, but sometimes it can be really hard to give up. I think we’re all taught from a young age that we should finish all the books that we start, and sometimes that way of thinking creeps back in. I wish I’d given up on one of the two books that tiggered this post. Here’s to DNFing books whenever we feel like it in the future!
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You’re right – for some reason we’re taught that not finishing a book is quitting and that’s a bad thing. I never thought about that before.
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Oh yeah I definitely get FOMO and plough through- welcome to the club 😉 I honestly don’t know if it’s better to keep going- cos it rarely gets better- but it does seem to be my instinctual reading habit 😉
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Thank you hehe! 😉 I never usually get reading FOMO but I’ve got it baaad at the moment. Just can’t seem to bring myself to end any book torture!
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