Week 17- I Give Up

[Joanna]

April's showers are almost over and soon it will be time for May flowers! Join our discussion for April's Online Book Club book, Ready Player One. And get ahead start for May- we'll be reading the Sherlock story, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Also with regards to the Online Book Club... feel free to join in on discussions for past months! The discussion boards will be open for the whole year.

What is everyone reading this week? I finally finished Star Wars: Canto Bight which was a lead up book to the latest Star Wars movie. I've had the book for a good five months. I almost gave up on it- it's an anthology and not all the stories appealed to me. The third one just dragged (partly because it's been done so many times before and there was nothing new about it). But I buckled down yesterday and read it.

What books have you almost given up on? Or what books did you give up on? In the world of bibliophiles, "Did Not Finish" (or DNF for short) can be seen as a dirty phrase. We're supposed to finish all the books we start. But there's no shame in not finishing something. There are too many great books out there to get bogged down in books that we hate. I only have a small handful of books that I did not finish and a slightly longer list of books that I should have stopped reading but kept going.

Pushing through Canto Bight was worth it for the fourth story in it so I don't regret reading it. But I definitely regret pushing myself through Gulliver's Travels. I ended up reading 5 pages a day just to finish it (I obviously hate that book). I gave up on A Feast for Crows because I couldn't get into the new characters; I do want to go back and try again, though. There are definitely others but those two stick out most in my mind.

What are your DNF books? Are there any you would go back and try again with? Let us know!

[Jodie]

I did not finish Twilight, Divergent, Hunger Games or The girl with the dragon tattoo; I could not get into any of the books, although I watched every single movie made from those series. Go figure!
I made myself finish The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin back in high school. I was a lot more OCD then and made myself finish anything I started. I don't have that rule any longer, obviously.

[Ann]

Recently the books I didn't finish were Fifty Shades of Grey and The Romanovs: 1613-1918. I got through Peter the Great and then ran out of steam, didn't even get to Katherine (I think). One book I wish I could say I didn't finish was The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell (ugh), 1600 pages of one life is a bit much.