Alli the Book Giraffe

Hello readers! It’s Tell Me Something Tuesday. It’s been almost a month since I wrote one of these post! Vague questions can be hard for me sometimes. I do try, though.

How do you feel about DNFing books?

Tell Me Something Tuesday is a weekly meme created and hosted by That’s What I’m Talking About. Each week there is a prompt to talk about. If you would like to participate, you need to fill out this Google Form, and the prompts will be sent to your email bimonthly.

This Weeks Topic: Do you DNF books? When Do You Decide to Stop?

DNFing books was a concept that I didn’t even know existed until I found the book community in 2013. I would just slowly finish a book, no matter if I liked it or not, over the course of many months or just tell everyone I read the whole thing when I didn’t. Mind you, I only discovered a love for reading in 2005/2006. I was very new to reading at the time and didn’t know anyone else who enjoyed reading in high school, which I left in 2012.

I can’t say I have one solid answer for when to stop reading, but I do have a few different things I do, depending on the book.

If I’m listening to an audiobook and I notice I am not paying attention to it or zoning out a lot, I’ll just return the book. It may not even be the books fault. I could just be distracted in general. I might come back to a book one day, but for that day I’m done, no matter if I’m 5% or 50%.

Now, if I’m really not enjoying the book or actually hating the book. I might just finish it if I hate it, I’m not going to lie. I hate writing a negative review when I didn’t finish the whole book. BUT, let’s say I am not enjoying it, I’ll try to make it to the 100 page mark.

When I was trying out a post called Read It or Unhaul it back in May, which I ended up quitting due to life circumstances, I made myself read exactly 2 chapters before decided to quit the book. Now, I did read more than that on some, but it wasn’t required for that post. I will be making another one in the future, which I won’t quite this time, and I’ll have the same rule.

If the book is a thriller or has a mystery element to it, I’m searching Goodreads and other blogs for spoiler reviews to see what happens at the end. I used to push through those type of books in order to see the end. There are so many people out here with spoiler reviews that you really don’t need to force yourself to do that anymore!

In my opinion, the more books you DNF, the more you will enjoy your reading each year. Your book list for the year won’t be bogged down with 3 stars, 2 stars, or even 1 star books if you toss any book aside for any reason. I advocate for DNFing more !!

Where to find me: https://linktr.ee/Allithebookgiraffe

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