What books (if any) did you not finish, and why?

[Blue Ghost]

Hi! I'm posting the prompt this week:

What books (if any) did you not finish, and why?

I used to HATE not finishing books; I couldn't stand leaving something unfinished. Now I have more respect for my time, yet I rarely don't finish a book. But I'll share the first DNF I remember:

On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I legitimately was a page and a half away from finishing it when I lost it in my mother's car near the end of my senior year of high school. I was darn busy at the time and had pretty much read all of novel, so I didn't look too hard for it (it was in the passenger side door). I had 2 big issues with the piece:

1) As someone from the Mountain West, I got fed up pretty quick with his idealization of Denver;

2) The ignorant misogyny is insane with this one. It was written in 1957; there's some context. This book, for decades, was held as (one of) the American dream(s): to travel the expanse of our vast country freely, meeting people and leaving them behind and changing your life along the way. Well, this book was deemed as something to ASPIRE to, and who wouldn't want to road trip the country and have a ton of great experiences? Well, guess who the only people who could live the life portrayed in this book? Especially in the 50's? WHITE MEN.

Reading it as an 18 year old, I thought about how dangerous so many of the situations the main characters found themselves in would be for me. I fear that someone would do something terrible to me almost the moment I left home. And anyone of color would get so much suspicion hitchhiking and even just entering certain towns. If you're poor, just stay home. Of course there are ways to travel, and to do it safely, but in this novel the privilege is so glaring and unaware and at some levels even offensive .

[Madelyn]

Uh so, this is a bit embarrassing because it seems like it is all over booktok and everyone loves it but Six of Crows. I think it was just the writing style for me because I unintentionally read another book by the same author and didn’t like it either (tho I finished that one). I don’t know if I should pick it back up or not.

[Blue Ghost]

Madelyn wrote: "Uh so, this is a bit embarrassing because it seems like it is all over booktok and everyone loves it but Six of Crows. I think it was just the writing style for me because I unintentionally read an..."

I think not jiving with a particular author's—even a popular one's—writing style is a perfect reason for not finishing a book. Personal preferences don't even have to come as a critique to the writer either (though I did enjoy The Bell Jar, sorry Sylvia, I just don't like your poetry).

[Ray]

I didn't finish the third book in The Aurora Cycle series, Aurora's End by Amie Kaufman. I read the first two books in the Aurora Cycle Series a few years ago. It's a scifi series about a girl, Aurora, who was rescued from cryo-sleep after 200 years. She was on a spaceship that went missing with maybe about 100(??) other people who were also in cryo-sleep. However, she's the only survivor. The series follows the events of what happened after she was found.

At the time when I was reading it the third book wasn't out as yet and I had to wait a while to read it. When I finally got the chance, I read about 5 chapters and stopped. I dont remember the exact reason why I didnt finish it. My best guess is that because it was so long since I read the first two books I didn't feel connected to it anymore. It's also possible that I just got bored. 🤷‍♀️

I've been meaning to reread that series. But there is only so much time in the day for everything I want to do 🤧

[Stephen]

I DNF a lot of books. I try giving them a fair shot. Most books I DNF after at least 1/3 through. The last one was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I was reading James by Percival Everett for a book club and wanted to start with its inspiration. I hadn't read any Twain before so I wasn't prepared for the writting style, nor was aware of the satire behind his writting at the time. Just couldn't get through the dry, long winded writting style and the Jim Crow esque stereotypes of the black characters. I ranted about the book at the club meeting and some of the members educated me on the message Twain was trying to portray though satire. I think that did make me respect it a little more, but still don't know if I'd try it again.

[Stephen]

I feel you there @ratdaddy. Felt the same way reading Into The Wild. Some people think it's the easiest thing in the world to pack your bags and head out into the wild, but that blissful ignorance comes from a place of privilege. I work in the woods and can tell you a lot of my female colleagues, who work out there for a living, have a hard time even camping without concerns. I've heard enough stories and seen enough things to agree with them. It's not the Wild to be afraid of, it's the "civilized" prowling in the wild to fear.

[Blue Ghost]

Stephen wrote: "I DNF a lot of books. I try giving them a fair shot. Most books I DNF after at least 1/3 through. The last one was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I was reading James by Percival Everett for a ..."

Through the little interaction we've had on this platform, I get the sense that our reading tastes are similar. This makes our very different takes on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn rather ironic in my head. But I do believe that a book will hit different depending upon the circumstances in which you read it in.

For instance, my brother read Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy for a college lit class and was so deeply impacted by it he bought me a copy for Christmas and urged me to read it. I had read McCarthy before, but whatever he got from that particular book swerved right around me. Like, they travel around and it's punctuated by extreme nonsensical violence? I overall understood that the point was that racism and scalping and violence is bad, but it just didn't register with me on the same level. We talked about the book after I read it, and we chalked up our different experiences being to how twice weekly he went into a deep-dive about each chapter and thus was privy to nuances that I wasn't reading it on my own. I'm sure if I took that same lit class, I'd appreciate that particular work by McCarthy much more.

[Blue Ghost]

Stephen wrote: "I feel you there @ratdaddy. Felt the same way reading Into The Wild. Some people think it's the easiest thing in the world to pack your bags and head out into the wild, but that blissful ignorance ..."

That's a very literal take on the "man vs. bear" debate, haha. The author's privileges and perspectives and how they present themselves in the written works can have great impacts on how said works are received by certain audiences. And depending on how popular the books become and how grossly misrepresented a population is, they can be incredibly detrimental to the said misrepresented (and most likely a minorised) population.

Throwing it far back: look at black face. This was a caricature that degraded and dehumanized black folks so white folks felt better about enslaving them. For the whites at the time who didn't own slaves and thus had little interaction with black folks, this is all the information that they had to understand them. Books written by scholars about the slums of India travel much farther than the first-hand accounts (or they themselves) of the folks who live in those slums. In many cases we read to learn, but in such situations the intersectionality of the author is something that is INCREDIBLY important for the reader to be aware of.

[Blue Ghost]

Ray wrote: "I didn't finish the third book in The Aurora Cycle series, Aurora's End by Amie Kaufman. I read the first two books in the Aurora Cycle Series a few years ago. It's a scifi series a..."

!!! Throwing it back to the series vs. standalone discussion!

[Ray]

Ratdaddy wrote: "Ray wrote: "I didn't finish the third book in The Aurora Cycle series, Aurora's End by Amie Kaufman. I read the first two books in the Aurora Cycle Series a few years ago. It's a sc..."

Now that you say it, definitely a throwback. Fortunately, that situation doesn't happen to me often.

[Stephen]

Wow, that's a really good way of looking at it and very well said Meg. I admit, I should have done my homework a bit before slamming that book. It's easy to take what we know and understand today and use it against people of the past, especially when reading classic literature, but taking the time to understand their perspective and the era they lived is dificult, yet far more rewarding. Honestly, I tend to avoid classic literature, not because I dislike it, but because I know it takes a tremendous amount of work to fully appreciate, but when done correctly can be a fantastic experience.

I was thinking about the "man vs bear" argument as I wrote that haha. I've heard McCarthy's writting can be contentious. Haven't read any of his works yet, but maybe one day.You experience with your brother sounds identical to my experience with Huckleberry Finn. My friends who I discussed it with just couldn't understand why I disliked it, but they were much more versed in the nuances of the book, having read it in high school and discussing it many times prior. Yet I just stumbled into it like any other novel.

[Blue Ghost]

Stephen wrote: "Wow, that's a really good way of looking at it and very well said Meg. I admit, I should have done my homework a bit before slamming that book. It's easy to take what we know and understand today a..."

McCarthy's books are dark, dismal and very violent. He's best known for The Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain, a western in which two young cowboys are traveling the border between the SW US and Mexico during a highly racial charged and—as you said—contentious time. There's no way you can't depict the prejudices and lawlessness of that time without the story coming out pretty messed up.

The two novels of his that I enjoyed and recommend are The Road—a dystopian fiction—and my personal favorite, No Country for Old Men. The prior is set in an empty world with empty prose to match (the characters have no names, the sentences are simple and the only punctuation used are commas and periods). The latter is a high-action tale that includes a stolen treasure, a hunt and a serial killer who doesn't like killing, but feels like he is obligated to do so. No Country for Old Men was adapted into a film by the Coen brothers in 2007, and the actor who plays the killer—actor Javier Bardem; character Anton Chigurh—received an award for one of the most chilling performances on screen to that date. I liked the movie, it was loyal to the source material, but they took some of the "heart" and psychological dissonance out of the story by dulling the conversations Chigurh had with his victims before he killed them.