DNF

There are some readers who have no trouble abandoning a book. If the story isn’t dazzling them, they toss it aside, or drop it down a book chute, or hit permanent delete on their e-reader. Others struggle with the need to push on, to complete a task, to not give up.

I am firmly in the second camp. Half-read books feel like a sink full of unwashed dishes. Hitting delete on my Kindle feels like failure. I calculate the money I have wasted and the incomplete understanding I have of the story.

But, occasionally, I am just not up to it. Here is a list of my five Waterloos.

1.

Sorry to all the fans out there, but this classic is a dud. I don’t know how it became a feminist masterwork. All of the moral preaching from Marmee, shaping her girls into moral pillars, is offensive. Jo is not a compelling heroine. And all the interior formality made me claustrophobic.

Gave up at 33%.

2.

I would give anything to trade places with Danielle Steel. She has a gorgeous house in Pacific Heights, seven children, and a mob of devoted fans who rhapsodize about the joy her books give them. I have tried a few of her titles, though, and they just aren’t for me. Most begin with sunlight streaming through French windows. Her heroines are often rich heiresses living in posh surroundings. There is some central conflict, like a family boarding the Titanic. I don’t know how anyone connects with such flat characters.

Gave up at 45%.

3.

The protagonist is a therapist who takes every August off to go to Fire Island to decompress from the stress of her job. At the opening, she has agreed to see a teenage client at the request of the girl’s parents. The twist is that the client’s parents are both women. Maybe this was shocking in the 70s when the book was published, but the whole plot just didn’t pull me in.

Gave up at 25%.

4.

I can’t deny the brilliance, and prescience, of the premise of this trilogy. Maybe I expected too much from it, but I found myself skimming through a lot of the action scenes. I just didn’t much care about Katniss either. I later watched the movie and ended up fast-forwarding through most of it. Clearly not for me.

Gave up at 60%.

5.

This classic has the distinction of being the only book I have DNF’d twice. The epic Southern story is enthralling and I made it some distance twice before two factors left me cold. First, it is seriously racist. There is an interior scene when Scarlett tells herself that slaves are inherently inferior. I could maybe stomach this (because of the otherwise evocative writing) but the double dose of misogyny did me in. I am baffled as to why Rhett Butler is a romantic hero. He thinks he can read women, and that no means yes. It just all feels so wrong to me.

Gave up at 40%.