You should DNF your current read if…

For those of you out there not of the bookish world and those that like me have trouble with some of the bookish language, DNF stands for Did/Do Not Finish. Easy right? Well the meaning might be, but the actual decision to put down a book without finishing it.. not so much. At least for a lot of us bookworms out there…

We have many reasons to be conflicted about this, I have a whole discussion about DNfing and why it’s not such a bad thing (click here if you are interested to check it out) but in the end it’s a very personal choice, whether we feel as we are failing by quitting a book, or we just think that to be a fair reviewer we need to push through a whole book in order to give a more educated opinion on why we did not like it… or it’s just simply a personality trait of us that once we start something we have to finish it.

Dnfing  doesn’t necessarily mean quitting the book forever, well sometimes it does (because there are somethings that we are unable to deal with), but sometimes it’s just for a little while  until we manage to overcome that which prevent us from enjoying our book fully.

So, I have a few examples of when it might be a wise decision to stop reading and put that book down (noone needs to get hurt)… whether it’s just for a little while or for good — well I’ll leave that up to you.

• You find yourself looking to see your progress (page number, percentage read) every five minutes… Let’s face it, if you are doing this and you are not in some fast reading competition …maybe, just maybe.. you are not finding that book quite so interesting.

• You find excuses to put down the book, even doing chores you hate doing because… they start to sound better than what’s happening in the book.
• Your mind starts wandering while you’re reading, you suddenly remember the silliest things that have happened that day… or you are just organising your schedule, your chores, what you need to buy… All of this with the book opened in your hands…
• Your self monologue while reading consists in these key words… Ugghhh!! — I Hate this Character — This is Awful! — I can’t stand this, or just simply I just can’t… I think that if you are saying this to yourself … maybe it’s time to put that book down??

• You realised that 30 minutes have gone by and you have read the same paragraph like twenty times.
• Once you take a break from reading and go back to pick up the book you can’t remember where the heck you were, and even with the bookmark to point out where you are in the story…you don’t remember what you had read…
• You need to give yourself a pep talk before picking up the book… things like, it will get better, I’m almost halfway done, it can’t get any worse can it?

If you are experiencing any of these situations with the book that you are currently reading my most sincere advice is just put it down and slowly walk away from it… You know as well as I that there are so many other books out there waiting for us to pick them up and enjoy the heck out of them.. So why force ourselves with something that we are not having fun with at the moment… Maybe after a while we’ll be able to go back to it and love it, or at least enjoy it a bit… Or we might be able to find that book a better home if it’s just not for us… There’s no need for anyone to suffer… Right?

Hope you guys find these little rambling helpful and let me know in the comments what are your thoughts on Dnfing Books?? Is it easy for you?? Do you force yourself to read even if you are not enjoying it?

As Always

Happy Reading