February 27, 2023
Unfinished Books: Do It the Right Way!
Unfinished books are an inevitable part of reading. Perhaps you took a chance on a completely unknown author, or perhaps something everyone else praised just wasn’t for you. If we only read books we knew we’d like, we’d never discover anything new. Indeed, in some extreme expression of this strategy, we’d never read anything.
But is there a “right” way of abandoning a book you’ve started?
My own long (and occasionally painful) experience with unfinished books leads me to say: most definitely! This doesn’t mean there’s an objectively right or wrong way (hence the quotation marks above). As with everything else in literature, your mileage may vary. You are the sole authority on what “the right” way is, just as, if you’re a writer, you’re the sole authority on your own work. I’m here only to offer you the method; not the criteria.
And so, with this mini disclaimer out of the way, let’s see my way of dealing with unfinished books. You can then adapt it to your own preferences and make sure you’ll never abandon reading a book for the… wrong reasons!
Unfinished Books Do not Necessarily Imply Reader Failure
We’ll take a look at several possible reasons why you may not finish a book, and here’s a little secret: All legitimate reasons – that is, reasons justifying your choice to abandon the book – have to do with disconnects between your expectations and what the book offers.
In other words, being bored, having heard something you dislike about the writer, or being distracted by something asinine, are all poor reasons to leave a book unfinished. They’re poor reasons because you don’t learn anything from your decision to abandon the book.
Conversely, a justified reason – such as one of the disconnects we’ll see below – means you’ve understood why you need to stop reading. This makes you a more experienced reader.
A disconnect doesn’t mean there necessarily is anything wrong with the novel in question; only that what the reader expects and what the novel delivers are incompatible. Keep that in mind if you’re planning to offer a fair review afterward!
Disconnect in Narrative Journeying
Once or twice I’ve come close to abandoning Haruki Murakami books, though I did finish them in the end. However, Murakami is a… repeat offender of what I’d term a disconnect in narrative journeying.
In simpler words, this kind of disconnect results in unfinished books because the story isn’t getting anywhere.
Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore (my review of it linked above)
quickly disintegrates, as its symbolism can’t come together in a proper, all-encompassing way.
[…]
Kafka on the Shore offers all these dreams without any serious thought of how they come together. It feels as if Murakami became too absorbed by his own fantasies – of all sorts – and forgot his authorial responsibility to create a symbolically coherent narrative.
If you’ve ever read a book and wondered “is this going somewhere?”, suspecting the author was just making stuff up as they went, this is precisely it. If you’ve abandoned a book because you got fed up by the author continuously setting off on diverging narrative branches, abandoning the previous ones and with disregard for continuity and narrative cohesion, then you’ve seen first-hand how a disconnect in narrative journeying leads to unfinished books.
Disconnect in Style
Unfinished books can often be the result of a disconnect in terms of style. That is, you might enjoy the plot of the book, as well as the narrative, but something about the author’s style puts you off.
This could be virtually anything. From overbearing descriptions to bombastic vocabulary, and from problems with exposition to narrative pace issues, perhaps the author has a certain style you just don’t connect with.
As an example, I’d have to mention Kenzaburō Ōe’s Death by Water. If you read my post on exposition, linked above, you’ll discover the following quote:
I can’t count the times that a character – in order to give for the umpteenth time the same info to the reader – tells another character something the latter already knows. In other words the narrative doesn’t justify the dialogue at all, but the author keeps pushing it in order to pass some information.
I just couldn’t put up with this and gave up on the book – well after the middle point, may I add.
Disconnect in Genre
Though I’m a fan of Japanese literature, I’ve had several unfinished books written by Japanese authors. Besides Ōe, above, I’ve also given up on Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings. Having read Convenience Store Woman, which I really liked, I expected something similar. I expected something with introspection, alienation, the struggle of finding one’s place in the world. Reading the novel’s blurb, I believed my expectations were reasonable.
Alas, the problem here was a disconnect in genre.
This is a rather rare case, because in our highly digitized world of easily available information, the genre of a book can be communicated fairly transparently. Though of course there are either genre-defying or outright experimental novels, a reader generally knows what to expect.
With Earthlings, I got something with young-adult – if not middle-grade – elements, which I certainly didn’t expect.
The plot of Earthlings involves children, yes, but that’s not the problem. Natsuo Kirino’s Real World, which I read right before Earthlings, also involved teens but was written in an adult-literature framework. Conversely, Earthlings approached everything in a simplistic, black-and-white manner, reminiscent of morality tales and fables.
Disconnect in Relatability
Some of the books I gave up on were pretty good actually. Their plot and narrative were great, the genre was about what I expected, the style was fine. But there was something crucial missing: The capacity to make me relate to the characters and their struggles.
Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is such a case.
The book basically describes the turmoil and outright clashes during the Nigerian Civil War, in the late 1960s. There aren’t many flaws in the text; it flows smoothly. And yet, it was incredibly difficult to relate to any of the characters, perhaps precisely because the focus was on the plot, rather than them.
In other words, though the novel undeniably contained personal hopes and fears, the sheer plethora of involved characters diluted their affective impact and left me… uninvolved. I’ve noticed this often occurs with historical fiction, which is why I avoid it.
Unfinished Books: Trying Something Is Never a Waste of Time
Sometimes we might give up on a book because we’re bored, because we’re distracted, or just, well, because.
But often there is a reason that basically forces our hand. As, I’m sure, experienced readers would agree, there are too many books and not enough hours to read them. Better allocate this time wisely, rather than on books that weren’t what we expected when we took a chance on them.
At the same time, trying something is never a waste of time. There have been many books I felt unsure about before starting them, but which earned my interest afterward. Unfinished books are just an annoyance. Missing on a great book because you didn’t try it, a literary tragedy.
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My favorite story about a DNF was the time I was checking out Pulitzer Prize winners, and decided to try A Confederacy of Dunces because of its ‘story’ – the mother, the suicide, the famous editor badgered into reading…
I forced myself to finish the first chapter, because I had started it, but with every line I read my gorge rose higher: brilliant writing – in the service of utter garbage (IMNVHO, of course).
I didn’t even do my usual – read the last three chapters of a potential DNF – but reached for my metaphorical tweezers and got rid of the ‘book.’
I’m not a fan of brilliance in the service of ideas I don’t want in my mind, if, indeed, it was brilliance, and I wonder about writers who spend time by choice on topics I have no desire to think about (I won’t read Lolita, ever), because my reading time now is too precious to waste. This is also why I don’t read Jodi Picoult – ick is always my first reaction.
She is quite popular and makes a lot of money, I’m sure, but no one forces my reading material on me, and I just have no desire to spend any of my life that way.
I NEED to identify with a character to be able to read or view the book/TV show/movie.
I don’t need these books not to be published – I believe in not silencing authors or dissent not hurting anyone – but I don’t have to consume such. Maybe in my younger omnivorous-reading years, but after I was an adult, I might have read to the end. Now I usually can take in enough information from the first few pages to make the decision then, and not bother with the rest. Occasionally, the beginning is attractive enough for me to figure I’ve earned the spoiler, and go give the book a final chance by reading the end – which has resulted in me reading more exactly once so far.
Unfortunately, junk sticks to my brain now – and I can’t quite scrub it out – so I go for the good stuff, and leave the garbage in the gutter. Life is too short. YMMV
I’ve read Lolita and yes, it’s about as disgusting (and brilliant) as you’d expect. These are tough cases. The problem is, it’s hard to know beforehand if it’ll be worth the effort (and being exposed to disgust). Like American Psycho for example. Violent but brilliant, it balances on the razor’s edge between “this is intriguing” and “this is too much”.
Life is too short is excellent advice that applies to anyone and any situation, thanks for your thought-inspiring comment!
It is not historical fiction that lacks aesthetic splendour, and cognitive power. It is propagandistic fiction. I have abandoned many books I know would reward me later down the reading. Canonical ones, the classics, you know? Because certain (great?) books are uniquely difficult. Peculiar in their own manner, they impose a challenge. Sometimes they don’t fit my current taste or preference, but if I can traverse them, I will rise out on the other end enlarged, improved even.
The classics are a peculiar case. There are several variables there to consider, among them an obvious disconnect in terms of relatability (both societal and stylistic/linguistic). Then, there are factors such as excessive verbosity.
I mean, let’s take Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, or Elizabeth Gaskell as examples: the fact that they all wrote in the form of serials means they had an incentive to artificially (=with no direct regard to narrative demands) extend their works. Many of the classics are basically glorified soap operas. To each their own, but I shamelessly confess I can’t stand most of the 19th-century prose.