Flipboard Culture DeskSep 3, 2024

Are you a completist when it comes to reading, or do you feel no obligation to finish a book that you're not enjoying? For his Substack, The Guyliner, Justin Myers discusses the dreaded Did Not Finish (D.N.F.) and his philosophy around when to quit. "Readers are embarrassed, sometimes, to admit a book has beaten them. ‘I tried to get on with it,’ they might say, ‘I had to really push through’," he writes. "To me, this is like couples who claim you have to work hard at a marriage. Might I suggest if being married is akin to a full shift down a salt mine, you’d be better off handing back the ring and spending your alimony on books."

How quickly do you abandon books you're not enjoying?

https://flip.it/eMaKFF

#Books @bookstodon #Reading #Literature #Culture #Poll

I quit within a few pages
15.5%
I read a good chunk before abandoning ship
56.4%
I plough through to the bitter end.
18.8%
Something else — explain in the comments
9.4%
Poll ended at .
The truth about D.N.F.

Defenestrate that book you hate.

The truth about everything*
Show threadChris LSep 3, 2024
@CultureDesk @bookstodon I carry the book around with me for what I expect to be the rest of my life. If I find out the author raped people or something like that, then I can recycle the book but otherwise I am condemned to fall under the spell of the idea of 50 hour days with no responsibilities except reading.
Show threadFlipboard Culture DeskSep 3, 2024
@jayalane Oh no! Either you have exquisite taste so you seldom have a bad book to finish, or a sturdy bag and unspeakably bad back problems!
Show threadChris L

@CultureDesk a few hundred unread physical books but generally shelved. Ebooks both help by being extremely light and hurt as it is very very easy to buy another one when I have extra cash.

My taste is not so good - a good chunk of my reading is rereading old (sometimes pulpy) favorites. The saddest thing is loving so much a few books by an author and then not being able to finish the others. 1/2

Sep 3, 2024 at 7:21pmWeb
Show threadChris LSep 3, 2024
@CultureDesk And then there are the virtuous non-fictions. Once I realized tsunamis r 90% one PDE I couldn't read all the chapters. I want to be a person who understands the appeal fascism has to certain types of intellectual schools, but there's neither conflict nor redemption. Why are whites choosing to die rather than be egalitarian? It's a sad tho well documented story. once in a while tho I stumble across a new author that is awesome, and even when I don't reading itself is pleasant
Show threadSasha WhiteSep 3, 2024
@jayalane @CultureDesk hey 👋