Hey there, book clan!
I hope you are all well and safe. First off, COVID-19 is no joke so be careful and take the steps—which are easy—to help the spread slow to an end. For us bookworms, it should be easy to keep to ourselves in our little caves.
Now, I’ve got the Scarlet Blip of the month! DNFing. Nobody likes a DNF (Did Not Finish) book. They can feel like real assholes and leave a reader deflated and disappointed because they felt like a waste of time. That being said, when it comes to a DNF I feel like it’s best to not review or put them on a self-titled shelf for the world to see, like on a blog or on Goodreads. Don’t even comment on it. Just set that book free back into the wild. Why? WHY, you ask? WHY should you even hear me the rest of the way out? I’m not the boss of you, right? Tell me to feck off, eh? That’s totally all right. LOL. But, bear with me here.
Why. The author. Here’s an author who’s put an insurmountable amount of time and work and sanity into a work of art, made with words and you, the reader found it to not be your style, to suck, to be absolutely dreadful. So of course, you want to rant. It’s not bad to rant and review. What’s so hurtful, and in a subjectable-opinionated way, is that it’s disrespectful to the author.
As a book reviewer, I feel like it’s a responsibility of mine to share my excitement or anger or any other range of emotion and intrigue about a book and its contents that I’ve loved and/or found disgruntling, not to review the books I couldn’t get myself to finish and list off why. Hassling a DNF only pushes away prospective readers who may fall in love with the book you couldn’t, and finish it when you couldn’t. When mentioning or showing that a book is DNF you kill the interest from the get-go before any level of debate about reading said book can be made.
Recommendation? When you discover you can’t finish a book, and it happens to everyone, even me, just donate it. Dismiss it. Let it fly free without any hope that it’ll come back. Don’t hold on to it and disgrace the work of art by showcasing it on a scary shelf labeled DNF. Again, why listen to me? What do I know? I’m no professional, just a worm crawling through books and sharing my own thoughts and possibly giving useless advice to the reading community that may never be used or may get backlash. It’s fine. And no, I’m not pressing my bare foot down on your free speech because—once more for the one in the back—you can ignore me. However, if you agree then beautiful. Amazing. Splendid. Let’s delete that DNF shelf. No need to keep it.
There you have it. The blip of the month. The great intrigue of the DNF.
More to come soon…
-K.
Find Me:
Thoughts? How do you feel about DNF? Let’s chat in the comments below!
The Scarlet Reader 
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