The Dreaded DNF

Last week Ramblings on Romance had a post about DNFs, asking why people do or don't finish books that they aren't enjoying. This made me think about my own DNF's and I realized that I have what would probably be considered a high proportion of them. I don't blog about most of them because it seems sort of depressing. I absolutely don't believe in the idea that women reading romance have to be positive and "nice" all the time. At the same time I don't want to create the impression that I feel negatively about genre books, because I really do love them.

That said, there are quite a few standard tropes, especially in romance, that I dislike. I try to remember that tastes vary and every trope I hate has plenty of fans or it wouldn't exist. However, there are still a few I dislike enough that they tend to make me sort of angry. I try to avoid them when I'm choosing books, but sometimes they're not obvious from the description or back cover blurb.

There are also authors whose writing style just doesn't mesh with my personal taste. The books aren't bad, I just don't like them. Because I have very little time to read for pleasure I want to maximize my enjoyment. That means I move on if a book isn't working for me. Theoretically a book could get better and I've probably given up too soon on some books that I would have ended up enjoying. However, in my experience that doesn't happen all that often. I'm willing to miss a few good reads in order to save myself from wasting time on lots of books I don't like.

Because I have so many DNFs I've come up with informal rules about which books I review and count toward challenges.

• If I don't make it at least a quarter of the way through the book I don't write about it. I feel like it's sort of unfair to write a review based on so little. Also, I find that if I drop a book that early it's generally not that the book is objectively bad, it's just not my thing. I don't think "meh" is a very useful review and if it's not useful then writing it is a waste of time that could be spent reading.

• If I get between a quarter and half the way through I'll write a DNF review. Said review will most likely be full of snark. This is because if I gave up after making it that far it's because the book really irritated me in some way. Plus I'm annoyed about having wasted my time on it when I could have been reading something else.

• If I make it more than half way through a book I generally just finish it, even if I'm not loving it. In that case I'll write a review and give it a low grade.

In short, when I give a book a snarky DNF review it's not because I'm a bitter shrew who hates romance. It's just that I'm upset that I missed out on using my precious time reading something better.