Did Not Finish

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Did Not Finish

Happy Tuesday everybody! Also – yay! – double post!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly post currently hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It celebrates lovely lists, wonderful books and the bookish community. This week’s topic is Books I Did Not Finish. Like last week’s prompt, I feel it’s rather self-explanatory. Of course, I’ve chosen to DNF several books in my life – more than ten, definitely – so I’m going to pick the ten most recent ones.

Here we go!

  1. Witchmark by C.L. Polk: This one… I dunno, I was intrigued by the premise, but I think I was just so distracted and stressed by my job at the time that I couldn’t get into it (I’m pretty sure it was the holiday season). I remember distinctly not being in the mood for reading at the time as well. (Attempted to Read: 2020)
  2. The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins: So yeah, I know everyone loved this book, but I just couldn’t get into it. To be fair, I couldn’t get into Jane Eyre either and I know they have their differences, but… I dunno, I guess it’s not really my genre or whatever? (Attempted to Read: 2021)
  3. Children of Ragnarok by Cinda Williams Chima: This one hurt. This was one of my anticipated reads of November 2022, and it just wasn’t doing it for me. I’m not even really sure what it was about it in particular; honestly, I think it was several different things. (Attempted to Read: 2022)
  4. Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree: I wanted to like this one. Actually, I wanted to love it. But it was waayyy too slow for me. I think I made it to around 16% before I threw in the towel. I was bored. (Attempted to Read: 2022)
  5. The House Witch by Delemhach: I loved the premise for this one too… but the writing killed it got me. Like I loved the world and the characters, but this book needed an editor. It has a lot of potential though… (Attempted to Read: 2022)
  6. Gods of the Wyrdwood by RJ Barker: Yet another one of the books on my anticipated reads list – this one for July 2023. I couldn’t even make it past the first couple chapters. This one just didn’t grab me at all. (Attempted to Read: 2023)
  7. The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson: I’d been wanting to get into The Stormlight Archive for a while, though I was extremely apprehensive about it because all the books are over a thousand pages long each. Annnd… I couldn’t get into it. I gave this book over two hundred pages, as well. I think I got so burned out from it, actually, that it put me in a reading slump. So yeah, it wasn’t for me. (Attempted to Read: 2023)
  8. Stars and Smoke by Marie Lu: And a third representative from the anticipated reads list appears – this novel from the March 2023 list. I just… I dunno, I think I got a third of the way through this before the characters just irritated me too much. I’ve also found that as I get older, I can’t stand how Marie Lu writes hyper-intelligent characters. (Attempted to Read: 2024)
  9. Ordinary Monsters by J.M. Miro: I dunno, I just couldn’t get into this one. I didn’t grab me at all, really. And I gave it over a hundred pages. I just don’t think it was for me, unfortunately. Dunno what it was about it, though. (Attempted to Read: 2024)
  10. I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons by Peter S. Beagle: This one… I might actually go back to, eventually. Even though it was slower, I enjoyed a lot of what was going on here. But I made the unfortunate decision to start reading this a few days before Christmas, a holiday that – as much as I love it – always distracts and/or stresses me out. So maybe I’ll give this one another shot someday. For now, however, it will remain unfinished. (Attempted to Read: 2024)

What books have you DNF-ed recently? What are DNF-ed novels that bother you the most? Why do you typically DNF books?

As always, thanks so much for reading, and I hope that you have an amazing day/night!

See ya ~Mar

My DNF Books of 2022

So, this year, I was fortunate enough to read a lot of books. Unfortunately, I didn’t like – or, at the very least, couldn’t get into – a few of them enough to finish them. Yes, this is that list. So, here I go.

Note: Though this list is numbered, it isn’t ranked by my enjoyment of the novels. It’s ranked by the order that I attempted to read the books in.

  1. Witchmark (The Kingston Cycle #1) by C.L. Polk: This one is cheating a bit since I technically tried to read it at the very end of last year. I didn’t not like the book – not at all! – I was actually pretty interested in it. The problem was I attempted to read it around the winter holidays last year, and I was incredibly busy – much more so than this year even. I’ll probably give this another try eventually.
  2. Cress (The Lunar Chronicles #3) by Marissa Meyer: I want to finish The Lunar Chronicles. I really, really want to finish The Lunar Chronicles. But both times that I’ve tried to finish Cress it just doesn’t happen; for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to finish reading this book. I will say that both times I’ve made an attempt, something came up, so I’ll probably try again sometime. I really want to finish this series, after all.
  3. Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree: Everyone loves this book. I wanted to love this book. But it was just too slow-paced for me, I guess.
  4. Children of Ragnarok (Runestone Saga #1) by Cinda Williams Chima: I was very excited for this release, because I love a lot of Chima’s books. But I just couldn’t get into this one, and I found the characters to be kind of bland and not as likable as from her other novels. That and the repetitively used and (presumably) Norse-based words almost gave me a headache. The plot also took a bit too long to start getting off the ground. I mean, a hundred plus pages? Come on…
  5. The House Witch by Delemhach: This book seemed so cozy and fun. It seemed like it has a bit more plot, and it also seemed a bit more faster paced than Legends & Lattes (which if already DNF-ed at this point), so I had some hopes for it. But alas, I just didn’t care enough about this book to get into it. It also felt under-edited there was some dialogue and naming conventions that took me out of the story.