Top Ten Tuesday: Petty Reasons You’ve DNF’d a Book

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

This is an interesting one to think about! I won’t be including what books I’m specifically referring to here, but I do think sometimes DNF’ing is simply what’s best. If I’m not getting along with a book, forcing myself to read it just makes me feel even worse by the time I get to the end. I read a lot, so I’m bound to come across those I don’t fully click with. In recent years, I have been a little more liberal with DNF’ing, but the full prompt for today applies, I think.

I don’t like to linger too long on negatives, so this week, this is a Top Six rather than Top Ten.

Top Six Petty Reasons I’ve DNF’d a Book or Reduced its Rating

Formatting

I include formatting because it’s often outside the author’s control, however, in reading arcs I expect some level of wonky formatting, and I put up with it, though there are plenty of publishers that do it well enough it’s hard to understand why, exactly, some want the books to go out near unreadable. But, I deal with it, and get on – but occasionally I come across something where the formatting makes the whole thing incredibly difficult to read. And if I decide to DNF because of formatting, it’s really got to be terrible.

Poor Worldbuilding

Some writers are great at worldbuilding, some…not so much. Too many writers dipping into contemporary, non-speculative works don’t realise even a contemporary or historical romance needs some element of worldbuilding! One reason I DNF books is because the worldbuilding is…lacking, maybe because it needs more research, or the world around the characters isn’t fully formed.

As-You-Know-Bob

Yeah – this is kind of a pet peeve of mine, but over-explaining in dialogue grates on me like nails on a chalk board. If you’re not aware, ‘as-you-know-Bob’ relates to characters saying the most obvious things in dialogue. The term comes from the idea of two neighbours, who have lived next to each other for many years, seeing each other as they both exit their houses. So, one neighbour says to the other, “As you know, Bob, my wife is Carol, and I have two children, both under the age of ten. I’m currently off to my job as a…” etc. It’s all information Bob is already well aware of, so it comes across as stilted and unnatural.

Too Much Exposition

Some writers have a tendency to give you so much information up front, introducing all different elements of the story before you’ve even had a chance to meet a character. It kind of ties in with the previous two points, but it’s definitely something that’s made me put down a book.

She strode boobily…

I’m kind of using this for shorthand, meaning…really badly written female characters. You know the ones I mean, when the most defining feature of a character is their boob size, or even how well they look in certain clothes, or a kind of fantasy seductress air to her when it’s not intentional. Basically, the kind of thing that is usually spotlighted in “Men Writing Women”. When the POV feels completely off (whether it’s men writing women, vice versa, or others writing outside their own identity) I’m either not finishing it at all, or struggling on and leaving a single, solitary star.

Bleak and Gritty

If a book prides itself on being ‘gritty’, but tackles that by just making things exceptionally bleak, without any actual thought behind it, I’m done. If a writer handles things in a way it’s clear their main goal is to shock for the sake of shocking, rather than an actual narrative choice, I find it incredibly boring.

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What are some of the pettiest reasons you’ve DNF’d a book? Is there anything that particularly bothers you if you see it right there on the first page?