Quote:
Originally Posted by DNSB
So far I've only marked 1 book as DNF. But now that I've done it once, it will probably happen more often in the future.
My experience was much like @Katsunami's with the Edward Bulwer-Lytton book in the OP. In the middle of the first chapter, the story was suspended while the author wandered off into an overly long (and, IMHO, unneeded) mass of prose for setting/world building. Back to the story for a few pages and then yet more repetitive world building. Which is where I DNFed the book. Where's an editor when you need one?
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So this is actually the only book you marked as DNF? LOL.
Quote:
Originally Posted by arjaybe
You could try skimming the dense parts. That's what I do if there's too much wallpaper. I have discarded a few books in recent years. I don't have the patience I used to.
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Nah. I either read it, or not. I'm not going to skim over half a book and then say that I've "read" it.
As Deskisames said: life's too short for bad books. I have almost 1100 books in calibre, including 60 Delphi Classics. So, I have lots to read, most stuff in the fantasy genre. I'll pick a classic now and then as I used to, but if I don't like it I'll just stop reading it.
It's not the patience that's the problem; it's the time. If I start to get the "Get on with the STORY already!"-feeling, then I get the urge to do something more productive. World building, background, an info-dump now and then are all OK. Sentences with info-dumps that take up a third of my screen and are so complicated that I mentally have to rebuild them into separate sentences so I can actually understand them, are not OK. It's certainly bad if half the book is written like that.
Seems to be an affliction that got around quite a lot in the days of the Victorian writers. Maybe they where trying to one-up one another in this regard. (It actually wouldn't surprise me.)
If a book is not great, but it's easy to read an not too long (for example: one of the lesser Forgotten Realms fantasy novels), I could still see it through because it can be read quickly. Therefore I have a feeling that most of my DNF's will end up to be 'classics one should have read...'