I remember so clearly the moment it all changed for me. It was December 2022. I closed a book, realizing that I had just wasted several hours of my life that I would never get back again.
The book in question took its title from one of my favourite poems by my very favourite poet; the book was called This One Wild and Precious Life. It had a beautiful cover. I had read a positive review. And that book remains, to this day, one of my most hated books ever. It was smug, pretentious, judgmental, hypocritical, and off-putting in every way. I was so angry when I read it and I was angrier still at myself. Because, even while I hated every single page, I FINISHED IT.
At that moment I made a vow. I was not going to push through and finish books just for the sake of finishing them. What a waste of time! The hours I spent reading This One Wild and Precious Life, I could have been reading an enjoyable book. I could have been rereading an enjoyable book. I could have been reading a marginal but inoffensive book. I could have been scrolling Instagram and looking at photos of people’s children in matching holiday jammies. I could have been doing any number of things and it would have been a better use of my time than reading that book. I vowed right then and there that I would abandon ship – I would DNF – when I wasn’t enjoying a book.
It’s not like I have always finished books that are unpleasant to me: I have never gotten through more than the first chapter of both The Shipping News and The Secret Garden, two books that seem like they should be right up my alley, but aren’t. I once picked up a book with a great back cover copy and a beautiful cover, and within the first chapter it was apparent that the story involved a father raping his sixteen-year-old daughter, and I literally threw the book across the room before sedately collecting it and walking it back to the library. I don’t even remember the title. I’m sure there are other books that I didn’t finish prior to December 2022, but they don’t stand out in my mind. The vast majority of the time, I would just slog through a book until it was done, and then feel kind of low about it.
Life is a journey and I am a work in progress, and so I haven’t always been great about this, but I have been trying to DNF more and more these days. After all, we are here for a good time, not a long time, and I am going to have a good time reading books that I love every day.
I have noticed that if I am more than a third of the way through a book I tend to push to the end, even if it is a slog. I will also push through if a friend highly recommended it, but I have definitely gotten more selective about whose recommendations I heed. A friend once told me that Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club was the BEST book she had ever read, and listen, I have read any number of bleak and depressing books in my time, but this was the bleakest and most depressing. I kept reading – she said it was the best ever! – and dear lord, do I regret my choices. I kept waiting for something, anything good to happen, and no. No. I feel depressed even thinking about it.
The moral of this story is that you should understand your friends’ reading preferences before you take on their favourite books. Otherwise, you will be explaining how you disliked the book and why, which can lead to awkwardness or, in some cases, hurt feelings. The other option would be to lie about it which, in addition to being morally suspect, will only lead to more disagreeable recommendations in the future.
I don’t have a hard and fast rule for DNFing, but my general feeling is that if I am not excited, compelled, or at least mildly interested to pick up a book, it is a candidate for abandonment. There are some themes that I find too upsetting to read about ever, namely addiction and hard drug use. I am still scarred from a scene in Trainspotting, and I didn’t even read that book. I merely flipped through it at a bookstore, read a scene which I can only describe as deeply horrifying, and set it down before backing away slowly. The fastest I abandoned a book was one that I didn’t even start: it was Matthew Perry’s memoir. Why I had picked this up, I do not know, but as I casually flipped through the pages prior to beginning it, I realized that the entire thing, start to finish, was about his extreme drug addictions. I took it back to the library that very same day.
The other big DNF trigger for me is abuse: child, sexual, or domestic. This is very dependent on both the book and my mood, but in general anything gratuitous or graphic is a non-starter for me. I have read many such books and I do not think my life has been enhanced by them in any way. Well, I suppose it has given me a more compassionate outlook, in that we don’t know what a person is going through at any given time. But I still feel incredible anger when I think of Angela’s Ashes, The Glass Castle, and Educated. I want to go back in time and NOT read them.
At the dinner table, my younger son was telling me about football star Ray Lewis’ teenage workout routine. Lewis would draw from a deck of cards and do the number of pushups associated with that card – face cards were assigned 10, 15, and 20 – and he would go through the entire deck in one workout. Wow! I said conversationally. I wonder what made him come up with that! My son looked at me. His dad used to beat up his mom, and he wanted to be strong enough to prevent it ever happening again. I started to cry while my son hastened to reassure me that Lewis bought his mom a house with his first big NFL paycheque, and that she was safe, and friends, life is just so heartbreaking at times. There are so many unspeakably sad things happening every minute all over the world. I am at a point in my life where I don’t want to read things that are also unspeakably sad.
But also, I don’t want to read things that are unspeakably boring. There are so many books out there, and so many great books to reread. Not to be grim, but if I died tomorrow, would I have wanted to spend today reading a book that I should have abandoned? I mean, hopefully I WON’T die tomorrow, but carpe diem all the same.
Weekly Reading
I know what you’re going to say, and I will swoop in to admit that yes, there is a good deal of abuse and trauma in Elizabeth Strout’s books, but they are still amongst my favourites. The abuse and trauma are all part of the backstory, and are delicately alluded to; the books themselves are heartbreaking but also so hopeful and joyful, and belong to my favourite category of books, those that delve into the extraordinary details of ordinary life. Also, I got a ton of reading done this week as my husband was on a backcountry hiking and camping trip with my older son, and my younger son was working and dogsitting. It was just me and Rex, happily reading for hours each day.
Oh William! This is the third book in the Lucy Barton series, and it involves Lucy’s relationship with William, her ex-husband. William makes a huge discovery through an ancestry subscription he receives as a gift, and his life is never the same. For the record, I NEVER want to do one of those ancestry things! For so many reasons, but mostly, I DON’T WANT TO KNOW THINGS. Anyway, this book is excellent and, like all Strout’s books, I love it.
Lucy By The Sea. The fourth in the Lucy Barton series, and kind of the last – this one takes place during the first year of the pandemic, and whoa nelly, hold onto your hats because it is a very realistic picture of that very weird time. It seems like a fever dream now. I do really like this book but maybe not quite as much as the rest of the series, because it reminds me of not seeing or hugging people for so long, having schools closed, etc. But it is still a beautifully-written book which gave me much to think about, even with that awful lockdown year six years in the rearview mirror. Remember watching “the numbers?” God.
Tell Me Everything. This takes place after Lucy By The Sea, so it’s kind of, but not really part of the series. The first time I read this book, I was just overwhelmed with the happy feeling that it was a love letter to Strout fans. All of the characters for all her books – up to that point – were featured, and it is a beautiful story of connection and love. What hit me on the reread was the poignancy of an emotional affair-that-isn’t-really-an-affair. The book centres around a friendship that is ALMOST, but not quite, more than a friendship. It is also a quiet book about people, the life they lead, and how we all crave real connections. I love this book very much.
To Kill A Mockingbird. Does it get any better than this beautiful story of humanity and community, of people trying to make change in a rigid and racist society? I love it so much. I am a person who rarely, rarely cries while reading, but the penultimate chapter brings a lump to my throat every single time I read it. This book contains two of my favourite lines ever written: “…I thought Jem and I would get grown but there wasn’t much else for us to learn, except maybe algebra,” and “I said I would like it very much, which was a lie, but one must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can’t do anything about them.”
And with that, Reread Fortnight has ended! My library holds are starting to come in and I have my dear friend Maya’s book to read as well (HI MAYA). We had rain this weekend, actual rain, for the first time in months. The air feels clear and fresh, the garden and farm market are full of deliciousness, and I baked a cake yesterday. Life is good. xo
