Learning to not finish books

I used to hate marking books as DNF; I hated giving up on them. Part of my new year resolutions a couple years ago was to finish all the books I started. That meant no DNF. I did really well actually but I noticed it slowed me down. I was reading less books because I was struggling to get through these books I wasn't enjoying too much.

One of the reasons why I didn't want to mark books as "did not finish" was because I felt guilty. Maybe it was just me being a slow reader or something? I also felt that with having a book blog and writing up my reviews, I needed a variety of ratings. So if I was giving up all the books I didn't like, would it be good enough to write an honest review? Should I even write one since I didn't even finish the book? And at what point do I give up? So many questions! And also, would I even have 1, 2 or 3 star reviews ever again? It seemed like in order to review these books that I thought weren't great, was to actually finish them.


Over the last few months though, I've been struggling with getting through some books. For example, I talked about not being able to get through Fight Club in my last post. But then I jumped to a different book and I read it in a few days which made me realize that maybe I wasn't reading books I loved. And yeah, I enjoyed the other book I picked up, but would I give it 5 stars? Maybe, maybe not. I would have to sit and write up my thoughts, what I enjoyed and what I didn't to really be able to say if I would give it a high star rating. Which means that I might still have a variety of ratings after all.

I was reading A Once Crowded Sky these last couple of weeks and I wasn't liking it. I'd been looking forward to reading this book for years, since I saw it at ALA in 2013. And when I finally got to it, I was sadly disappointed. It's not that I hate it. But I don't want to finish reading it. So I decided I wouldn't. That means that this year I already have two books that I didn't finish, which would have been outrageous for me before but now...it feels kind of liberating. There are so many books I want to read and according to the TBR time, it would take me about 18 years to finish all the unread books I own. I don't have time for that. I could be either struggling to get through a meh book or I could be speeding through an amazing book. I choose amazing ♥