testpam1

Top Ten Tuesday – Books We Decided to DNF (did not finish) too Quickly

pamstopten

Oops, we seem to have got our weeks mixed up! Oh well, sneak peak for next week’s topic and we’ll catch up then!

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 weeks topic is Top Ten Books We Decided to DNF (did not finish) too Quickly.
Neither of us are big at DNFing books however. Usually we hang in there a little too long…

Paein

defy illuminaeA Darker Shade final for Irene Three Dark Crowns stealing snow

I really don’t DNF too soon…if fact I tend to keep going until I’ve read myself into a slump and I have too many books for that behaviour! I’ve learnt that I can put a book down if something annoys me or I just can’t get into it. Here are some of those:

1 Defy

by Sara B. Larson

Oh my gosh. Just no.
[If the sound of this is interesting to you, go and read Tamora Pierce's The Song of the Lioness Quartet. THAT is how you write a girl-disguised-as-boy story.]
I mean, I was set to love this, it wouldn’t have taken much. But Alex was preoccupied with the fact that she was a girl NOT a boy the whole freaking time instead of just being a person and I don’t believe she strapped her chest down to hide it so she stressed about that too and despite not doing any training she was The Best. Meanwhile, while she was stressing over the fact that she was actually a girl and NOT a boy, two people noticed. More specifically, her prospective love interests noticed.
I mean her attempt to ‘blend in’ was so half hearted why didn’t EVERYONE notice?!

2 Illuminae

by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

I really wanted to like this one. It sounds amazing and while I thought I’d have trouble with the mixed media delivery, I don’t think I did. The bit I had trouble with is a character keeping information from another. I know that’s normal and the inability to keep things secret is actually not but when it’s Big News and the characters are gonna be all buddy buddy later….well I find that hard, because I really don’t think I’d be able to deal with that, so how can they?!

3 A Darker Shade of Magic

by V.E. Schwab

I was so sad that I DNF’d this book as Ms4Tune loves it, but the whole plot is centred around a guy making a mistake.
A tiny, little, massive mistake. Which is possible, that happens. However he’s in the position where he would be SO FREAKING CAREFUL by habit that I found it really hard to keep going because such a happening didn’t fit with the character he was meant to be.

4 Three Dark Crowns

by  Kendare Blake

I don’t remember why I stopped this one to be honest, my last update is 32 pages in which is quite early for me (though I do know at least one or two have been earlier). I wasn’t so excited about 3 sisters fighting but I had a sample of book 2 from Netgalley to read so I was trying. It was quite slow and though I was interested to find out what happened, it seemed I worked out the Big Twist really early on, which was weird as I rarely notice what’s coming. So probably I didn’t get it completely right, but I just wasn’t interested any longer.

5 Stealing Snow

by Danielle Paige

I got 28% through this apparently. Or that was my last update. It was actually a Netgalley Arc and I don’t usually DNF them on goodreads, I usually delete them. Still 28% is quite a way in so maybe that’s why.
My last update was confused, I do remember being confused. She spent her life thinking she was crazy or something then suddenly she had complete control of her powers? Uh huh.
I didn’t even make it to the love square. Or did I? Hmmm

Ms4Tune

you Solar Bones the light we lost When you were mine prime

I don’t usually DNF but I recently realised that I have very little reading time as it is, so I shouldn’t waste it reading books I’m not going to enjoy. So the first three on my list are books that hit my newly found DNF pile and the other two are books I really should have chucked in but didn’t.

6 You

by Caroline Kepnes

I picked this one up because I’d seen so many amazing reviews. Unfortunately it was full of swear words and I’m really not one for unneccessary swearing. I know, so old fashioned but it’s something I really can’t stand so I ditched this book after a couple of chapters.

7 Solar Bones

by Mike McCormack

This was one of the nominees for the Manbooker prize last year and I was intrigued because it was written in a continuous monologue sentence. I thought that sounds different and exciting. Sadly it was very hard to read and the storyline was very very slow so I ditched this after about 40 pages (mainly because I couldn’t figure out where I’d got to when I tried to pick it up again – something easily done when there is no punctuation or paragraphs).

8 The Light We Lost

by Jill Santopolo

I’ve really enjoyed other Reese Witherspoon Book Club reads but this one was horrendous. I don’t know whether it was the insta-love or the use of 9/11 as a romantic starting block. Either way, I put this down 20% of the way through and I’m not sorry about it.

9 When You Were Mine

by Rebecca Serle

Supposedly a Romeo and Juliette retelling… Lets just say I pushed through till the bitter end but the story was so forced into shape that I wish I’d just put it down. I gave this 2 stars in the end… I don’t know why, as I’ve only got feelings of contempt for it now.

10 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

by Muriel Sparks

If it wasn’t for the fact that I was going through a ‘I must read classics’ phase I really wouldn’t have picked this one up, let alone forced myself to finish it. It was dull and boring.

pam id pics paein pam id pics and pam id pics ms4tune

spacer

7 comments on “Top Ten Tuesday – Books We Decided to DNF (did not finish) too Quickly

    1. Paein

      I’m glad you enjoyed it! I never made it to the end…
      I like what you did with this weeks topic! Nice post.

  1. Astilbe Reviews

    No worries! It happens. :) At least you’ll get to read everyone else’s answer this week. That might give you ideas for your own response next week.

    Here is our Top Ten Tuesday. Thank you!

    1. Paein

      :O You’re a genius! haha But then I’ll feel like I’m cheating… :s Perhaps I should come up with a list first!

    1. Paein

      I feel bad I didn’t like it as so many people do love it! It was just that what was happening didn’t fit with how I interpreted the character :(

      1. iloveheartlandx

        I mean that’s fair! The wonderful thing about reading is that we all read in different ways and that there’s something out there for everyone!

Leave a Reply