When I was much younger, it bothered me when I was unable to finish a book. It felt like a mixture of disrespect to the author and laziness on my part. And after a certain point, the sunk cost fallacy would kick in and I’d think, I’ve made it this far, might as well finish it. Not anymore! These days, my patience is tissue-thin, and I will drop a book in just the first few pages if I am not enjoying it.
My three biggest reasons for not finishing a book are poor (or absent) editing, YA fantasy that wasn’t marked as YA, and sloppily researched, key plot points, usually involving a subject that I know something about.
Why no YA fantasy? I am an adult woman. I don’t want to read a story targeting hormonal 12-year-olds.
The best example of sloppy technical research is anything churned out by Frieda McFadden. Even the laziest writer can read a Wikipedia article to find out some basic facts about how trains or credit cards or grocery stores work, for example. God help us when she veers into medical-adjacent plot points. Sheer nonsense. Was she trying for fantasy on top of the psychological mystery angle? She, and her readers, apparently don’t care. Count me out.
I recently added a fourth reason for DNF: florid, overblown writing. I don’t encounter this very often because I don’t read genres that tend to the florid.
I had already passed over a new biography about Hedy Lamarr several times. Although “The Only Woman in the Room” seemed to be an intriguing story, I never could get hooked enough to check it out. But I’ve got several holds pending at the library and I decided to fill the gap last week with this book since it was available.
I was horribly disappointed. I couldn’t make it past 20 pages. It seemed to have been written using an algorithm that specified that every noun had to have one or more adjectives and every verb one or more adverbs. It was ponderous. Adding insult to injury, verb choices were always the most complicated possible. No “she said” for this author. It would be “she breathily intoned” or some other tortured word choice. Even more insulting, key points were repeatedly repeated. I don’t want to be hectored when I am trying to escape into a story (looking at you too, Louise Penny).
I can’t believe that people read this and thought, wow, such
a good book. The fact that it was on the NYT Best Seller List means nothing
since those rankings are easily manipulated. This book was so overdone that I am
not sure if humans were involved in its writing or editing. Either way, it was
DNF for this human.
