No regrets

My recent list of DNFs and thoughts on the subject

I took an online quiz a few years ago that tried to divine how many books I’d get to read in the rest of my lifetime. The questions took into consideration my age, general questions about health, and how many books on average I read per month. Very scientific. The number the quiz spat out at me was somewhere around 1,000. That sounds like a lot of books, one might say. But I am not “one.” No, when I read that number I started feeling panicky. Only 1,000 more books? Think of all the books in the world! There are millions! Trillions of sentences exist that I will never read. It’s a bit mind boggling to think about.

Whether or not I’ll read another 1,000 books in my lifetime is truly inconsequential. The amount of books that a person reads doesn’t matter. What matters is if we enjoyed and/or learned something from what we choose to read. Coming to terms with the cold truth of my reading limitations made me decide that I needed to be more discerning. If there was a book I was slogging through and didn’t enjoy, I’d drop it. If I had the choice between a classic tome I felt as though I “should” have read or a bubblegum romance I know would fill my cup, I chose the romance. No regrets.

One of the most beautiful things about art is that it’s all subjective. When people tell me that they try to review books as objectively as possible, I can’t help but scrunch up my face. Why? And, also? That’s just not possible. Believe me, as a former high school English teacher and composition college lecturer, I designed all sorts of “objective” rubrics with which to grade essays. They sort of helped. But sometimes you have a gem of an idea muddied up with convoluted language, or the reverse is true. At the end of teaching for about a decade I came to the conclusion that I don’t believe in grades. But that is probably an essay for another day…

All of this brings me to my list of DNFs (did not finish) within the past two or three months. Just because these books didn’t speak to me, it doesn’t mean that they are bad, or even that I wouldn’t have liked them had I kept going. Perhaps it was just not the right time for me to read these particular books at these particular times. I’m a big believer in book timing serendipity. For example, many years ago I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and didn’t like it very much. I know, right?! I read it again about three years ago and felt as though under a spell. I absolutely loved the slow, drawn out tension, the eerie atmosphere, and the complex friendships at the heart of the novel. Thank goodness I gave it another shot, because now I’ve been tipped off to the fact that Ishiguro is most definitely my cup of tea. (I recently read A Pale View of Hills and loved it and just started The Buried Giant last night! Don’t tell me anything about it!!)

If you’ve read any of the following books and loved them, amazing! Please tell me why and maybe it’ll convince me to give them another shot. I’m always open to trying again. Except for Wives Like Us by Plum Sykes. I am not willing to devote another minute to that truly asinine book. Apologies to Plum! (I usually try not to diss other writers and their works because I know how difficult it is to write a book, but I’m pretty sure Plum is super famous? She will not care what I have to say, as she shouldn’t!)

Recent DNF’s

The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin

Cocoon by Zhang Yuerin

Your Two-Year-Old by Louise Bates Ames

Wives Like Us by Plum Sykes

Christy by Catherine Marshall

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Consent by Jill Ciment

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (I read this in high school and loved it! Am planning to try again in the future.)

Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson

Heaven by Meiko Kawakami

Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee (I got 75% of the way through this and it just fizzled and faded out for me, though I absolutely loved his writing style.)

All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

The Other Black Girl by Zakia Dalila Harris

Lunar Love by Lauren Kung Jesson

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe (I have heard so much hype about this one, but alas, not for me. At least, not right now.)

The Grace Year by Kim Ligget

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune (I waited for months for this and was so excited because so many people loved it! But I found I wasn’t excited to go to bed at night to read and was drawn to scrolling Substack on my phone instead…oops! So I called it quits around 30%)

…and so many more!

I hope that seeing my incomplete list of recent DNF’s frees you up to shop around a bit in your reading. After all, there is no syllabus here. Your reading life is part of your life. So make it your own.

Which of these should I try again at another time? What books have you DNF’d? (Just please don’t tell me if it was mine…😉) At what point do you decide to call it and put down a book? (I almost always give it thirty pages.) Let me know in the comments!

And remember…life’s too short to finish a book you’re not enjoying just because you think you should!

With love from my kitchen table,

Kaia