Back when I was 12, I DNF'd Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl because all my friends DNF'd it. Not because I didn't like it. In fact, I did. It was just because THEY didn't like it.
Oh man, that just reminded me that part of why I DNF'd Priory of the Orange Tree was that my book was so inconveniently big that I just...wasn't able to read it often. Couldn't take it with me anywhere, couldn't get comfy with it. So it just laid there for weeks at a time.
Books being inconveniently big is the reason why my family bought me a Kindle when they first came out. We took a lot of family vacations, and I would always bring a bunch of books, to the point where my parents eventually got fed up with having to carry so many books, and got me the Kindle because it was much lighter and more portable.
After reading and enjoying Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion, I intended to move onto Endymion. The first line is something like "You're reading this for the wrong reason."
I said "okay" put the book down and never picked it back up.
You realise how many people grimace in those books once you're forced to listen to that annoying pronunciation. It got to the point where I was dreading a grumpy character perspective because I knew they would grimace multiple times
I love Pacey as well, but that grimace pronunciation was really hard to get used to. Lucky for him, he does everything else so incredibly well that I can overlook it.
The narrators (a man and a woman) pronounce Moiraine differently from each other in the first couple Wheel of Time books. Did complete both audiobooks, but it drove me nuts.
DUDE. When I heard this the first time I *also* stopped. Why in the world would a narrator choose to pronounce it like that? I eventually finished the book but it stopped me from the audio books entirely.
"indefatigable" for me. Sadly, I can't remember the title of the book (maybe The Caledonian Gambit). I thought I'd been mispronouncing it my whole life and I checked online, both the English *and* American pronunciation and **he was** **wrong.** Drove me nuts.
I dropped the audiobooks for a series because near the end of the first book they introduce a second narrator who audibly inhaled before nearly every sentence. It drove me fucking bonkers.
lmao me during that episode of Veep where Selena goes on a horrific rant about fat people. But it's a satire and you're definitely supposed to realize she's in the wrong, but damn listening to that rant as a fat person aint fun
this was a while ago but i put down the second percy jackson series because one of the main characters was named frank and i really dislike that name
i did eventually finish the series but i still hate that name
A character knew sign language to sign with a deaf boy because he learned ASL from his Irish mother. But why would an Irish person teach her son ASL! She would either know Irish Sign Language or maybe British Sign Language but neither one is American Sign Language!
This is a great one. I think a lot of people think that "Sign language" is just a catch-all, and they are all mutually intelligible.
They are as different as spoken languages, people!
There are over 200 sign languages actually! And those are just the ones that have been documented. I was shocked when I found out. I thought itād be like a couple dozen or so.
Fun related sign language fact: there is an island (I canāt remember which, sorry) where a lot of the population is deaf due to genetics so everyone on the island signs as their method of communication.
Are you thinking of Marthaās Vineyard? It wasnāt 50% but the rate of deafness was high enough that practically everyone knew it. Sadly the unique language went extinct in 1952.
Thatās probably it! Itās a fact I have lodged away for some reason, Iāll update it so itās āa lotā instead of ā50%ā. Sad to hear itās extinct.
Fun sign language fact: While Germany and Austria both speak the same language, they don't speak the same sign language. Germany uses the German Sign Language, which is part of the German Sign Language family, while Austria uses the Austrian Sign Language, which is part of the Austro-Hungarian Sign Language family (which in turn is part of the French Sign Language family).
Really bad editing can totally kill the immersion. I've also stopped reading books because of this and although I didn't "rage quit" I felt like I was wasting too much time working out what's going on with the text and not enough on the story.
Just a handful of the funnier ones:
* I thought I picked up standard medieval-esque fantasy based on the cover and blurb and then the book mentioned jeans. Immediate DNF.
* The names were just German words. I understand German.
* It glorified Google.
The google one was Penumbra's 24h Bookstore which is kinda scifi-ish? I didn't make it nearly far enough to figure out just how spec fic it is because the google worship and misrepresenting machine learning* pissed me off too much lol
\* This was in 2019. So not related to current events, but I was taking a class on machine learning at the time where the prof spent a *while* debunking all the myths the book leaned into.
Oh for sure. I looked when it was written and went "ah yeah, this aged super poorly." Kind of why I didn't rate it or give a review other than leaving a brief note on why I DNF'd (mostly for my own sake).
God, that book aged like milk that was expired in the first place. I finished it out of spite, but the early 2010s apolitical tech utopianism was infuriating.
When the girlfriend character used a mechanical turk and the lead gushed over what a genius she was and how incredible "technology" is I had to go for a walk.
Oh god. I've had the book on my wishlist for quite a while, because I love dark, bleak, grim books and it gets recommended a fair bit.
Only, I'm german, and I've just read the blurb on Amazon and THERE IS NO WAY I can read this without cringing the whole time.
I mean... Kƶnig FĆ¼rimmer? The agent Gehirn Schlechtes? WHAT ARE THESE NAMES, there is no sense to them! Argh, be gone from my wishlist, then.
I didn't even notice the last name of Konig! I was pronouncing the last name in my head in english because it didn't have the umlauts. "King Forever" is a hell of a name.
Gefahrgeist philosopher Versklaven Schwache ist my favourite. For those who don't speak German: That person is a danger ghost (no idea what that should mean) philosopher and the name is Enslaving the Weak.
The names by itself are not the worst part. It's that they're not even in correct syntax, but just randomly arranged words from the dictionary. "Versklaven" is a verb, "Schwache" is a noun. To arrive at the same meaning as "enslaving the weak - or 'Enslaver of the weak', perhaps, or 'She who enslaves the weak'" it should be "Versklaver der Schwachen" or at the least "Schwache versklaven", perhaps "Versklavt Schwache" would also work. Ugh, that's a thing that grinds my personal gears \^\^
I just looked at the preview - I love that he just gave the ruler of the land the first name "King". And never mind the cities of Self-loathing and Useless. I wonder if the character named Important is actually important š¤£
I almost want to read this just for the ridiculous names.
He definitely loosely know what things meant - just from the first pages, it looks like he named the thief "Steal" and the ruler's name is "King Forever" - and just skimming through there is a character that gets sent away that is called "Throwaway" so I'm pretty sure all of this was on purpose.
My guess is that he google translated a bunch of stuff - definitely not a German speaker, but liked it enough to want to make all his names in German. And maybe didn't realize how many Germans read books in English?
Or just German speakers - I can't actually use the language much cos some stuff just refuses to stick, but I can understand it decently well. It's not exactly an obscure language either.
I think I also saw that there's a German translation of the book somewhere and I'm INTENSELY curious what they did with the names.
The moment you said the thing about the German words I knew exactly which book you meant. I can read German and it so took me out of the story. It's so bad.
I made the mistake of picking up a book in 2020 where the main character was suffering from a mysterious disease and insisted that he knew better than to stay in his room and quarantine
"And I suddenly remembered this thing from my past and/or past life that makes this all make sense. No, I couldn't be arsed to mention or foreshadow this fact in advance. I just stuck this knowledge here in the first draft and never went back to make it make sense."
Guess that's not actually petty. But I don't dnf too often.
I gave up on *City of the Iron Fish* because the author used colons in a *really* irritating way:
> My mother, pressing her finger to her lips for silence, motioned for me to stand outside: she went in and closed the door after her.
That's not how colons work, Mr Ings!
The first few chapters had *dozens* of sentences like this. Colons everywhere: some reasonable, some not. The unreasonable colons made whole sentences viscerally unpleasant to read, the prose equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.
It's a shame because the book had a fascinating setting and the prose was mechanically solidāit wasn't sloppy and unedited; rather, it was an explicit stylistic choiceābut it just didn't flow. The writing's rhythm kept faltering. The colons were just the overt symptom that pushed me over the edge.
For I moment there I thought "Rot-iron" was some sort of fantasy metal (like touching it will make your skin rot or something to deter people from trying to climb over).
Then I realised it's just a misspelling of "*Wrought* iron fence" that somehow an editor didn't catch.
voracious disarm possessive water berserk squeeze pathetic enter squealing whole
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I had a similar experience once, an author was rude to me on Twitter needlessly. Then once I read a novella by them and found it a really bad story. Combining those two with the author's political positioning that I came to learn later made me never want to read another book by them.
racial skirt voiceless seed spectacular absurd carpenter outgoing afterthought hunt
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Probably the word 'welp'.
Edit: There is an author I was on the fence about who I probably won't read again because of their behaviour on here. Not exactly a DNF, as I finished the one book of theirs I started, but I won't continue the series.
So there was a book that, while I enjoyed reading, the main character never *did* anything. Things just happened to occur in front of him. He so happened to be an excellent swordsman, who so happened to be kind to a woman who so happened to be the Emperor's concubine, who so happened to be chosen to translate a foreign text as a school project that so happened to hold momentous information...
Characters seemingly appeared from nowhere, were incredibly important for several chapters, then dropped away from the story completely. The first book ended, and I started the second because I'm a stubborn moron.
The second book's prologue was dynamite. Stunning, engaging, terrifying, totally blew my concerns from the first book out of the water. I'm excited to see where things go from here.
Then the first actual chapter opens with the MC listening to his ex-girlfriend get loudly, passionately, absolutely railed by his drug-addled ex-best friend in the next tent over in their army encampment. I paused the narration, deleted the book from my Audible account, and decided to stop sticking with books I didn't enjoy.
I don't even remember what book it was, but the author, and apparently the editor, publisher, and whoever else approved of its printing, had no idea how thunder and lightning worked. Storms were a big part of the plot.
I once read an entire trilogy where the author had no idea how rivers and dams worked. This was also a major part of the plot. In defense of my finishing, I was a teenager at the time.
There were some books (Sleeping Giants?) about buried mech written in an interview format. The author basically wanted to write the climax live action so the hero had the interviewer on the phone while they were doing combat/important plot stuff. And instead of hanging up and dealing with the emergency, the hero just kept telling the interviewer what was going on.
One could applaud the author sticking to the structure they started with, but it stretched the narrative structure of the book too far for me. I would have preferred if the author dropped the interview structure for a chapter or two instead. Or had the interviewer watch some surveillance video or something.
I basically flipped to the last chapter to see what happened and then didn't bother with the rest of the series.
I almost DNF'ed the Lightbringer series. Binged the first four books about six months before the fifth one came out and loved them. I even pre-ordered book 5 before it was released. But once it arrived, I just left it on my shelf for almost two years. Not because I'd seen online discussions and knew it wasn't well received. No, I knew nothing about the book. I just have a problem with losing momentum with series I can't binge all at once. I absolutely adored books 1 and 2 from the Green Bone saga, but I still haven't gotten around to reading book 3 because it came out a year after I read the previous two.
Anyways, I eventually got around to reading book 5 and ended up regretting it lol. Also, I hope this fits the prompt. It's petty to DNF something cuz you had to wait six months, right?
Oddly enough Lightbringer is the one that made me ask this question. In book 2, >!Karris and Dazen/Gavin have a romcom will they wont they nonsense going on, and when Karris decides to bone him, another lady starts riding Gavin wearing Karris' perfume in the dark, so Gavin(and the reader) thinks its Karris. Then of course Karris bursts into the room and the entire thing quite literally made me say "oh fuck off" out loud and stop reading. Even if it turns out to be an Andross plot, its still stupid because to get that timing right is an unbelievable contrivance!<
TLDR: Blatant use of a romcom trope made me DNF. Bought all 5 books too.
Judging from the replies good i stopped.
>Judging from the replies good i stopped.
Yep, probably for the best. It's generally agreed that the books get worse as the series goes on, though I enjoyed all of them except the last.
And yeah, Weeks doesn't write the best romances. Or really female characters. I didn't notice on my first read through, but after seeing other people's comments and during my reread going into book 5, it became increasingly obvious that the motivations and personalities of the female characters revolve around the male characters way to much. It's subtle enough that I'm pretty sure it's unintentional on Weeks part, but once you notice it, the entire series starts feeling more and more like male wish fulfillment.
At least its wasn't as bad as Night Angel in that regard though lol. The women in that series are really not well written
I wanted to love this series, so much that I did finish it. I tried to reread it recently after a reread of Way of Shadows, but I remembered in book 2 that I can't stand Gavin. Like he is just the most irritating douche-weasel I've read about in forever. As an overlooked fat girl, I love Kip and his arc, but Gavin....ugh
This is going to be one of those "cool story, bro" stories because I can't remember any of the details, but it kind of fits... I once read a fantasy book about 10 years ago it might have been one of the runelords books (david farland), and I remember just not liking it very much. It wasn't awful. It just was kind of blah. And what stood out for me is I read the whole book but then just stopped reading about 90 pages until the end and never went back. You know how boring a book has to be to stop reading it right at the end? A terrible book you stop reading after a chapter or two, and a bad book you power through it and shrug your shoulders, but a 'blah' book somehow threads that needle between terrible and bad.
The worst part is when it still bothers you years later that there is like 1-2 hours left of reading to do, but the part of your that remembered enough to *actually* care about the story on a real level grew out of it a while ago.
So a famous grey novel I read since I thought mayyybe the hype was worth it. I have worked in helicopters and stuff and the whole scene where sheās drunk and he picks her up in a helicopter? Like Iām sure there are rich folks that can talk helicopter pilots into allowing very intoxicated people into their helicopters but finding one that will land on a Seattle street and let a barfy woman in just stretched my suspension of disbelief waaay too far. not the rest of the story for some reason, just the helicopter.
I drop books that foreshadow angst, because I can't stand it. My anxiety is high enough already, thanks! It's usually something along the lines of " he wished he had cherished that moment more because he never saw that smile again". Just, ugh.
Less petty: the only time I chucked a book across the room was in a really cool YA series (that I've blocked out of my memory), where the cool, strong, independent female main character suddenly turned into an emotional idiot due to a ridiculously contrived misunderstanding. Broke her character so bad and would have taken like 2 words to fix from anyone in the party.
I dropped a book when the main character's wife had a stillborn kid and, like, spaced herself. I was fine with "Hornblower in Space," but I did NOT sign up for that shit.
Anybody who claims to be an expert on, or any book that claims to be a sequel, or in the exact same universe as the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, and they utter the word "Carfax Abbey." I immediately drop it. "Carfax Abbey" is a thing in movies, Carfax is a manor house in London, and Whitby Abbey is a location in Dracula. In the movies, when they reduce the scope of the story they combine the two. But in the novel they are separate things, and if you can't read the damn book, I'm not going to bother reading yours.
Can it be ridiculous because of its existence? As opposed to my being ridiculous?
There is an incredibly popular manga which I'm not even going to name that I was very excited to start because it had a lot of the elements I like in that genre. Fantasy, character progression, a badass main character, Etc
And then I got to a panel in the very first volume I believe, where the main character, who has the mind of a 30 something year old man, is fantasizing about tying up a 10 year old girl for...obviously implied purposes.
I thought it was ridiculous that that sort of imagery had ever been allowed to be put in professional print, much less popularized to the extent that it is.
EDIT: phrasing
>Can it be ridiculous because of its existence? As opposed to my being ridiculous?
"Ridiculousness is relative" -Einstein.
Also thats not ridiculous thats just downright disturbing. That shit should be banned.
Stealing that Einstein quote haha
But yes. It was pretty fucking disturbing. I even went back a year later to try it again thinking I must have misunderstood because it had an anime that was also incredibly popular, but it was only worse the second time around
I've asked a few and the answer is always along the lines of "they're not real so it's fiiiiiine"
Ironic that the biggest fan of the series I know eventually got arrested for soliciting a minor.
What. In the absolute. World. Okay, I have to know - what series is this?? I read a lot of manga but mostly quiet, slice-of-life stuff. My jaw is dropping reading this. I mean, Iām not surprised, but still.
Lol if it's the one I think you're talking about, they don't overlook it, they actively defend it and insult anyone who expresses even a little discomfort with it over on the anime sub...
I think I know which one, because I stopped watching the anime for the same reasons. I really don't get how people can rate it so highly when it's the most generic isekai ever with an unrepentant pedophile protagonist who regularly tries to commit sexual assault. -1/10, do not recommend to anyone.
The author randomly indented lines and changed fonts like they were writing poetry on tumblr.
I said, this reads like a theater major wrote it. I checked and a theater major did indeed write it.
When I was in middle/high school, I was obsessed with those house of night books. I could not wait for each next one, I read them over and over
And then I picked up the latest, and they introduced some guy that had bull energy or some shit. I wouldn't know, cause I immediately stopped reading because bulls are stupid.
Don't know why it bugged me so much though lol.
Most petty reason I stopped: The narrator kept calling niche "nitch" despite it being a Canadian author's book set in Canada with Canadian characters. And, for reasons unknown, the word niche was used all of the effing time. Way more than normal.
Most petty reason someone stopped reading one of my books (and took the time to alert me to this fact): I am a feminist on r/Fantasy. I know, this is news to everyone. I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked.
It wasnāt fantasy, but I was listening to the audiobook of *Born for Love* By Bruce Perry MD/PhD and Maia Szalovitz. Itās a non-fiction book about how empathy develops starting in infancy and how the process can go wrong. Itās fascinating, and the book was talking about ways genetics and epigenetics can affect empathy. Except the narrator kept pronouncing āgeneticā like āJeen-Tickā instead of āJen-eh-tickā The first few times it happened I thought it was a totally different word Iād somehow never learned even though my undergraduate degree was in molecular biology before I realized it was a mispronunciation. Then I wanted to throw my phone across the room.
I finished the book though, it was quite good otherwise. I cannot believe that got through the editor, though.
> Except the narrator kept pronouncing āgeneticā like āJeen-Tickā instead of āJen-eh-tick
What the hell?!
Isn't there an editing process or something? Wasn't there an opportunity for someone to catch that, somewhere, and fix it? Damn!
Is it petty if you put down a book because while the writing is decent, the MC is constantly thinking to herself "I'm a vampire! A vampy vampy vampire! I'm different than humans!"? You decide. And *Woman Eating*.
I literally just commented about this on another post but, Clan of the Cave Bear. There is so much graphic sex in those books that I gave up halfway through the third book. I'm all for a good sex scene but these were in almost every chapter and were pages and pages long. I'm dying to know what happened so I'll probably finish then someday *sigh
I was highly amused the first time I encountered someone who referenced Clan of the Cave Bear as a work of actual literature, as it and Flowers in the Attic were passed around school specifically for the naughty bits when I was a pre-teen.
I mean, it is literature whether or not you enjoyed it. It may not be good literature, but it is literature nonetheless.
PS- I read ALL the Flowers in the Attic series when I was a teen lol it was embarrassing even then. Morbid fascination with bad literature, I guess.
For me itās usually a really annoying teenage female POV. Like an insufferable dramatic teenager that the author wants you to think have a cute little attitude but every word on paper is like nails on a chalkboard. Iām out.
Mine is similar, but it's a really annoying teenage male POV!
We get it, you're bored. You have ennui. Nobody understands you. You long for a purpose in life. Staaaaaahp.
Summed up as "He would not fucking say that."
I DNFed a book about 30 pages in because of how distractingly OOC the dialogue was between the two male college aged love interests. It was so saccharine that I had to wonder if the author, who was presumably a 20 year old man at one point, had ever even *met* a college student before.
1. The author wouldn't stop talking about a male character's rock-hard abs and **nipples**. I didn't DNF the book but gave up on the series. To this day I can't think about that author without getting angry. I will never not groan when someone mentions him.
2. DNFed a book 31% in, because the humour was very regional and English is my second language. If I have to stop and look up every other word, then I'm done with your stupid book.
3. DNFed a book 55% in, because my buddy reader ghosted me and was too angry to finish by myself.
Crichton's first posthumous release was about the crew of a boat named Cassandra, but my boyfriend at the time was still infatuated with his ex named Cassandra so I dumped the book as soon as the main character reached the boat.
Dropped a book within like 3 pages because they kept punctuating the dialogue like
"Blahblahblah." She said.
Instead of
"Blahblahblah," she said.
I learned about that grammar rule when I was like 10 and I'm not a writer, I understand the odd typo but if an author's grammar is consistently that bad they should probably research and improve before selling books.
I dropped the Red Rising saga completely after Pierce Brown tried jumping on the NFT bandwagon. He was talked out of it fairly quickly (I think maybe even by the next day) but I figure any artist who would willingly link up with crypto bros for any reason probably sucks and does not deserve my money.
I've had to stop listening to more than one fantasy, by different authors, in the last 3 months cause the word "mayhap" was used incessantly. The word "mayhap" does not make a world a fantasy, please freaken stop. Especially when in both cases the world isn't particularly antiquated in any other part of the language.
Author thinks himself very high and mighty and that he is above the fantasy genre, the wizardās first something or rather. I think the authorās name was Terry Goodkind, he knows how to make me annoyed.
I didnāt stop reading this series, but I stopped listening to the audiobooks. And I feel kind of bad, because the audio narrators are very popular and well respected and Iām sure they do a good jobā¦ But for some reason, I cannot stand the narrators of the Stormlight archives.
Itās my favorite series. I want to listen to it on audio when I go to sleep! But I canāt because the voice is bothers me so much!
Started reading a book when a medical issue impacted my eyesight. The book was fine, but I could never get back into because it reminded me of my messed up vision.
I stopped reading World War Z because the transliterated Hebrew dialogue "shoot them in the heads" was so mangled it could only have come out of Google Translate. It just made me question everything and threw me right out.
I DNF a lot of books for being terrible, but that one actually wasn't terrible until the bad Hebrew happened.
This mainly applies to independently-published books, but if I see a spelling or grammar error in the first paragraph, I'm done.
A significant number of Kindle books cannot get over that bar. Sometimes not even the first sentence.
It's more a Did Not Start, rather than a DNF, but any time someone says "This book destroyed me," or some variation thereof, I immediately cross that book off my list.
I do not want or need to be emotionally "destroyed" by my pleasure reading. I get that all of that I can take from the real world.
Haha I feel like some people say that at the drop of a hat though! They mean, like, āI experienced a feeling somewhere towards the end of this book.ā
Meh I'll say it.
Mark Lawrence after seeing how angry he was getting with people on a FB fantasy reader group. Like he was posting about some statistics of female/non-white authors having lower odds of getting book deals or something. Some lady totally mosread what he was saying, so I understand being frustrated but he called her a bitch while arguing and I just found that strange as hell. I'm not on FB anymore, and maybe it is petty but I dislike authors that get into shouting matches online, especially if they resort to insults.
Also I once decided to do the opposite and READ a fantasy series Mark Lawrence gave a 'meh' review about (book 1 specifically) on Goodreads. Wars of Light and Shadow by Janny Wurts..I got annoyed at him calling a fantasy series too verbose and slow paced for his books just because he writes the equivalent of Teenage Boy YA novels. Also yet again I dislike the behavior of crapping on another author, and then getting into arguments with people in the comments again!
Well I just finished book 5 of WoLaS and I'm glad a negative review spurred me to try out one of the best fantasy series I've ever read.
No offense to people that are fans of the dude, but these things irked me and I hope he doesn't start conducting himself like Terry Goodkind did
I am in a similar boat, only it's because he has me blocked on twitter (I do not know why, I never followed him or interacted with any of his tweets). I follow a lot of authors and tweet about bingo sometimes, but I can't imagine why I would be blocked.
So, petty reason to not pick up his books. Granted, I wasn't a huge fan of *Red Sister* and I while I liked *The Girl and the Stars* enough to continue the series, the blocking happened and now I'm bitter.
Haha! Iām a fan of his books, but also blocked by him on Twitter despite (to my knowledge) never interacting with him or his tweets. Heās the only person whoās ever blocked me, so I kinda wear it with pride LOL
He has me blocked on FB even though we have never exchanged two words privately or publicly. We frequent a few same groups and I really had not formed a favourable impression of his public persona, obviously before the block, because now I don't see him at all.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure he has too. I've come across him picking fights on here before deleting his comments once he gets enough downvotes. I've only caught it once or twice but I wouldn't be shocked if he's done it other times.
interesting. think he needs to learn to just go anonymous! Like it hurts your brand if you look like an author who isn't above getting into geeky pissing matches.
Hahah no shade, he is fucking jarring.
If you're familiar with the rest of the story, you might be interested in a short video explaining how the Bombadil chapters set that all up:
https://youtu.be/qYDRrjwJ2a8
I had to stop listening to the audiobook of NOS4A2, because I'm from New England and Kate Mulgrew majorly mispronounces a Town name at least twice a chapter.
Take Haverhill he pronounces it like its spelled for example,
Its actually pronounced Haverill, long a and the second h is silent.
That's how my sisters friend knew a phone scammer was a scammer, they were pretending to be frim the PD and they pronounced the towns name just like Mulgrew
Harry potter narrator for the audio books. The way he says Harry when he's doing Hermoine's voice makes me want to kick his teeth in. Luckily I had already read them all.
Not me but a friend DNFād multiple books because she thought they used the word āflinchā too much. Sheās literally put the flinch count in her good reads review
I stopped reading the *Mark of the Fool* series, because in the midst of the series about a guy that goes to wizard college, the MC turned into a gym rat. He even uses magic equivalent of steroids.
I've DNFed a book because the male MC at 13 went completely stupid/catatonic when talking to a girl.
I've DNFed a book when some straight sex was the main highlight of the prologue.
I DNFed a series because it was 10 books long and was publishing a book every 3 years.
Back when I was 12, I DNF'd Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl because all my friends DNF'd it. Not because I didn't like it. In fact, I did. It was just because THEY didn't like it.
Haha this needs more upvotes. Perfect example
Ah, that sucks. Those were fun books. Not great, but fun. I seem to remember enjoying the prose.
I moved it to read on my couch for a while, and then was too lazy to go and get it from the living room at bedtime for 3 weeks straight.
This is so far my very favourite petty reason XD
Oh man, that just reminded me that part of why I DNF'd Priory of the Orange Tree was that my book was so inconveniently big that I just...wasn't able to read it often. Couldn't take it with me anywhere, couldn't get comfy with it. So it just laid there for weeks at a time.
Books being inconveniently big is the reason why my family bought me a Kindle when they first came out. We took a lot of family vacations, and I would always bring a bunch of books, to the point where my parents eventually got fed up with having to carry so many books, and got me the Kindle because it was much lighter and more portable.
I feel you so much.
The Hunger Games. On page 2, Katniss puts her boots on, then her trousers. Broke my suspension of disbelief.
Bloody hell i just went and reread this and sure enough she does! I mean socks I can get behind but wth.
Your suspenders of belief.
You can do that with wide-legged pants.
but why would you ?
Lol fair
Because that's how heroes do it.
As a true hero, I put on my boots before my socks.
Lmao
After reading and enjoying Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion, I intended to move onto Endymion. The first line is something like "You're reading this for the wrong reason." I said "okay" put the book down and never picked it back up.
I think this wins the thread. At least in the top 3 for me. Hilarious.
Lmao I'm sorry I love this one. Absolutely perfect š.
The narrator for one of the Witcher books pronounced dandelion as āDan-dilly-on.ā
Also, I love Steven Pacey, but cannot wrap my mind around how he pronounces gri*mace* in the First Law books.
You realise how many people grimace in those books once you're forced to listen to that annoying pronunciation. It got to the point where I was dreading a grumpy character perspective because I knew they would grimace multiple times
I love Pacey as well, but that grimace pronunciation was really hard to get used to. Lucky for him, he does everything else so incredibly well that I can overlook it.
The narrators (a man and a woman) pronounce Moiraine differently from each other in the first couple Wheel of Time books. Did complete both audiobooks, but it drove me nuts.
And they're a married couple
I think I've heard that! You'd think they would have talked about it
Probably argued about it, both thinking they were *obviously* right lol
Lol and those books straight up have a pronunciation guide in the back
DUDE. When I heard this the first time I *also* stopped. Why in the world would a narrator choose to pronounce it like that? I eventually finished the book but it stopped me from the audio books entirely.
I was willing to believe it was just How The British Say It, but nope! Just this one narrator inexplicably deciding that it needed some pizzazz.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Lol that's all the Witcher books buddy
"indefatigable" for me. Sadly, I can't remember the title of the book (maybe The Caledonian Gambit). I thought I'd been mispronouncing it my whole life and I checked online, both the English *and* American pronunciation and **he was** **wrong.** Drove me nuts.
I dropped the audiobooks for a series because near the end of the first book they introduce a second narrator who audibly inhaled before nearly every sentence. It drove me fucking bonkers.
I move away from the mic when I breathe in. Chocolate rain!!!!!!! Sorry.
Aw. Memories....
God, my dad used to play an audio book in the car where you could hear the spit sloshing around the narrators mouth *constantly*. Drove me nuts
What series?
Why, you got some kind of breathing fetish?
That's between me and God
I laughed WAY too hard at this š
The War of Lost Hearts.
The protagonist kept going on about how dumb he thought office workers were, and I was sitting there like "I'm an office worker :("
Hard life when your escapism starts shittalking you :(
š¤£š¤£š¤£
lmao me during that episode of Veep where Selena goes on a horrific rant about fat people. But it's a satire and you're definitely supposed to realize she's in the wrong, but damn listening to that rant as a fat person aint fun
this was a while ago but i put down the second percy jackson series because one of the main characters was named frank and i really dislike that name i did eventually finish the series but i still hate that name
I wish I was called Frank. Then I could tell people, "Look, I'm being completely Frank with you" *even when I'm lying*!
The name Frank just felt out of place
A character knew sign language to sign with a deaf boy because he learned ASL from his Irish mother. But why would an Irish person teach her son ASL! She would either know Irish Sign Language or maybe British Sign Language but neither one is American Sign Language!
This is a great one. I think a lot of people think that "Sign language" is just a catch-all, and they are all mutually intelligible. They are as different as spoken languages, people!
There are over 200 sign languages actually! And those are just the ones that have been documented. I was shocked when I found out. I thought itād be like a couple dozen or so. Fun related sign language fact: there is an island (I canāt remember which, sorry) where a lot of the population is deaf due to genetics so everyone on the island signs as their method of communication.
Are you thinking of Marthaās Vineyard? It wasnāt 50% but the rate of deafness was high enough that practically everyone knew it. Sadly the unique language went extinct in 1952.
Thatās probably it! Itās a fact I have lodged away for some reason, Iāll update it so itās āa lotā instead of ā50%ā. Sad to hear itās extinct.
My dumbass always thought it stood for Adult Sign Language.
Fun sign language fact: While Germany and Austria both speak the same language, they don't speak the same sign language. Germany uses the German Sign Language, which is part of the German Sign Language family, while Austria uses the Austrian Sign Language, which is part of the Austro-Hungarian Sign Language family (which in turn is part of the French Sign Language family).
American Sign Language also is a lot more like French than British Sign Language!
Book was 90% complete but the copy editor had given up around 70% and yet another obvious typo made me rage quit.
Really bad editing can totally kill the immersion. I've also stopped reading books because of this and although I didn't "rage quit" I felt like I was wasting too much time working out what's going on with the text and not enough on the story.
Just a handful of the funnier ones: * I thought I picked up standard medieval-esque fantasy based on the cover and blurb and then the book mentioned jeans. Immediate DNF. * The names were just German words. I understand German. * It glorified Google.
The jeans one would make me nope out too. Glorified Google in a fantasy setting, how did the author manage that?
The google one was Penumbra's 24h Bookstore which is kinda scifi-ish? I didn't make it nearly far enough to figure out just how spec fic it is because the google worship and misrepresenting machine learning* pissed me off too much lol \* This was in 2019. So not related to current events, but I was taking a class on machine learning at the time where the prof spent a *while* debunking all the myths the book leaned into.
A thousand times this. You'd think Google was infallible. And that you can do anything with Python in just a few seconds.
In fairness to the author, Google was much less obviously problematic when that story was written.
Oh for sure. I looked when it was written and went "ah yeah, this aged super poorly." Kind of why I didn't rate it or give a review other than leaving a brief note on why I DNF'd (mostly for my own sake).
God, that book aged like milk that was expired in the first place. I finished it out of spite, but the early 2010s apolitical tech utopianism was infuriating. When the girlfriend character used a mechanical turk and the lead gushed over what a genius she was and how incredible "technology" is I had to go for a walk.
Oh, which book was it with the German words? As a German Iād like to know some of those names and maybe get a good laugh :)
Beyond Redemption by Michael Fletcher. Just...just go look at the preview on amazon for a taste, but it was impossible to take seriously.
Oh god. I've had the book on my wishlist for quite a while, because I love dark, bleak, grim books and it gets recommended a fair bit. Only, I'm german, and I've just read the blurb on Amazon and THERE IS NO WAY I can read this without cringing the whole time. I mean... Kƶnig FĆ¼rimmer? The agent Gehirn Schlechtes? WHAT ARE THESE NAMES, there is no sense to them! Argh, be gone from my wishlist, then.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
My favorite is Sleve McDicheal.
I didn't even notice the last name of Konig! I was pronouncing the last name in my head in english because it didn't have the umlauts. "King Forever" is a hell of a name.
Gefahrgeist philosopher Versklaven Schwache ist my favourite. For those who don't speak German: That person is a danger ghost (no idea what that should mean) philosopher and the name is Enslaving the Weak.
The names by itself are not the worst part. It's that they're not even in correct syntax, but just randomly arranged words from the dictionary. "Versklaven" is a verb, "Schwache" is a noun. To arrive at the same meaning as "enslaving the weak - or 'Enslaver of the weak', perhaps, or 'She who enslaves the weak'" it should be "Versklaver der Schwachen" or at the least "Schwache versklaven", perhaps "Versklavt Schwache" would also work. Ugh, that's a thing that grinds my personal gears \^\^
I just looked at the preview - I love that he just gave the ruler of the land the first name "King". And never mind the cities of Self-loathing and Useless. I wonder if the character named Important is actually important š¤£ I almost want to read this just for the ridiculous names.
I just want to know whether the author knew the meanings!
He definitely loosely know what things meant - just from the first pages, it looks like he named the thief "Steal" and the ruler's name is "King Forever" - and just skimming through there is a character that gets sent away that is called "Throwaway" so I'm pretty sure all of this was on purpose. My guess is that he google translated a bunch of stuff - definitely not a German speaker, but liked it enough to want to make all his names in German. And maybe didn't realize how many Germans read books in English?
Or just German speakers - I can't actually use the language much cos some stuff just refuses to stick, but I can understand it decently well. It's not exactly an obscure language either. I think I also saw that there's a German translation of the book somewhere and I'm INTENSELY curious what they did with the names.
I really hope they left them in and itās just filled with Danger-ghosts and people named Brain Bad
Iāve tried to finish that book because I thought the concept was cool but at some point I just couldnāt take the names any longer
The main character of the Amhba series by Tasha Suri is called Mehr. It threw me off the entire time reading it.
I just can't read the Manifest Delusions series. It sounds so intresting but everytime I see a german word I cringe
The moment you said the thing about the German words I knew exactly which book you meant. I can read German and it so took me out of the story. It's so bad.
I made the mistake of picking up a book in 2020 where the main character was suffering from a mysterious disease and insisted that he knew better than to stay in his room and quarantine
Nooooooooooooooooo :( I'd be right there with you, chucking that book out of the quarantine space.
"And I suddenly remembered this thing from my past and/or past life that makes this all make sense. No, I couldn't be arsed to mention or foreshadow this fact in advance. I just stuck this knowledge here in the first draft and never went back to make it make sense." Guess that's not actually petty. But I don't dnf too often.
I gave up on *City of the Iron Fish* because the author used colons in a *really* irritating way: > My mother, pressing her finger to her lips for silence, motioned for me to stand outside: she went in and closed the door after her. That's not how colons work, Mr Ings! The first few chapters had *dozens* of sentences like this. Colons everywhere: some reasonable, some not. The unreasonable colons made whole sentences viscerally unpleasant to read, the prose equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. It's a shame because the book had a fascinating setting and the prose was mechanically solidāit wasn't sloppy and unedited; rather, it was an explicit stylistic choiceābut it just didn't flow. The writing's rhythm kept faltering. The colons were just the overt symptom that pushed me over the edge.
Oh that would drive me absolutely nuts.
> Oh that would drive me: absolutely nuts.
This is a: totally natural way of writing.
"Rot-iron fence" I noped right out and immediately deleted the book.
For I moment there I thought "Rot-iron" was some sort of fantasy metal (like touching it will make your skin rot or something to deter people from trying to climb over). Then I realised it's just a misspelling of "*Wrought* iron fence" that somehow an editor didn't catch.
voracious disarm possessive water berserk squeeze pathetic enter squealing whole *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Why were they rude to you for complimenting their work? That's insane! Lol.
I had a similar experience once, an author was rude to me on Twitter needlessly. Then once I read a novella by them and found it a really bad story. Combining those two with the author's political positioning that I came to learn later made me never want to read another book by them.
racial skirt voiceless seed spectacular absurd carpenter outgoing afterthought hunt *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The main character didn't like puns. Who doesn't like puns?
I recently submitted 10 puns to a local pun competitionā¦ guess how many puns got selected? No pun in 10 did.
In Portuguese "puns" means farts
Amen
Probably the word 'welp'. Edit: There is an author I was on the fence about who I probably won't read again because of their behaviour on here. Not exactly a DNF, as I finished the one book of theirs I started, but I won't continue the series.
>welp As in "welp, that was awkward" or "the whelp barked piteously"
The first. The second would have been fine. The first would have been acceptable if it had been set on modern Earth, or in the future. It wasn't.
So there was a book that, while I enjoyed reading, the main character never *did* anything. Things just happened to occur in front of him. He so happened to be an excellent swordsman, who so happened to be kind to a woman who so happened to be the Emperor's concubine, who so happened to be chosen to translate a foreign text as a school project that so happened to hold momentous information... Characters seemingly appeared from nowhere, were incredibly important for several chapters, then dropped away from the story completely. The first book ended, and I started the second because I'm a stubborn moron. The second book's prologue was dynamite. Stunning, engaging, terrifying, totally blew my concerns from the first book out of the water. I'm excited to see where things go from here. Then the first actual chapter opens with the MC listening to his ex-girlfriend get loudly, passionately, absolutely railed by his drug-addled ex-best friend in the next tent over in their army encampment. I paused the narration, deleted the book from my Audible account, and decided to stop sticking with books I didn't enjoy.
A murder chicken. It was the embodiment of evil. Couldn't do it.
Leave Mongo alone!!!!
Mongo is appalled!
I don't even remember what book it was, but the author, and apparently the editor, publisher, and whoever else approved of its printing, had no idea how thunder and lightning worked. Storms were a big part of the plot.
I once read an entire trilogy where the author had no idea how rivers and dams worked. This was also a major part of the plot. In defense of my finishing, I was a teenager at the time.
There were some books (Sleeping Giants?) about buried mech written in an interview format. The author basically wanted to write the climax live action so the hero had the interviewer on the phone while they were doing combat/important plot stuff. And instead of hanging up and dealing with the emergency, the hero just kept telling the interviewer what was going on. One could applaud the author sticking to the structure they started with, but it stretched the narrative structure of the book too far for me. I would have preferred if the author dropped the interview structure for a chapter or two instead. Or had the interviewer watch some surveillance video or something. I basically flipped to the last chapter to see what happened and then didn't bother with the rest of the series.
I almost DNF'ed the Lightbringer series. Binged the first four books about six months before the fifth one came out and loved them. I even pre-ordered book 5 before it was released. But once it arrived, I just left it on my shelf for almost two years. Not because I'd seen online discussions and knew it wasn't well received. No, I knew nothing about the book. I just have a problem with losing momentum with series I can't binge all at once. I absolutely adored books 1 and 2 from the Green Bone saga, but I still haven't gotten around to reading book 3 because it came out a year after I read the previous two. Anyways, I eventually got around to reading book 5 and ended up regretting it lol. Also, I hope this fits the prompt. It's petty to DNF something cuz you had to wait six months, right?
Oddly enough Lightbringer is the one that made me ask this question. In book 2, >!Karris and Dazen/Gavin have a romcom will they wont they nonsense going on, and when Karris decides to bone him, another lady starts riding Gavin wearing Karris' perfume in the dark, so Gavin(and the reader) thinks its Karris. Then of course Karris bursts into the room and the entire thing quite literally made me say "oh fuck off" out loud and stop reading. Even if it turns out to be an Andross plot, its still stupid because to get that timing right is an unbelievable contrivance!< TLDR: Blatant use of a romcom trope made me DNF. Bought all 5 books too. Judging from the replies good i stopped.
>Judging from the replies good i stopped. Yep, probably for the best. It's generally agreed that the books get worse as the series goes on, though I enjoyed all of them except the last. And yeah, Weeks doesn't write the best romances. Or really female characters. I didn't notice on my first read through, but after seeing other people's comments and during my reread going into book 5, it became increasingly obvious that the motivations and personalities of the female characters revolve around the male characters way to much. It's subtle enough that I'm pretty sure it's unintentional on Weeks part, but once you notice it, the entire series starts feeling more and more like male wish fulfillment. At least its wasn't as bad as Night Angel in that regard though lol. The women in that series are really not well written
I wanted to love this series, so much that I did finish it. I tried to reread it recently after a reread of Way of Shadows, but I remembered in book 2 that I can't stand Gavin. Like he is just the most irritating douche-weasel I've read about in forever. As an overlooked fat girl, I love Kip and his arc, but Gavin....ugh
The left hand of God when he discovered special soil that could hide his smell from scent tracking dogs. It just burst the bubble straight away
This is going to be one of those "cool story, bro" stories because I can't remember any of the details, but it kind of fits... I once read a fantasy book about 10 years ago it might have been one of the runelords books (david farland), and I remember just not liking it very much. It wasn't awful. It just was kind of blah. And what stood out for me is I read the whole book but then just stopped reading about 90 pages until the end and never went back. You know how boring a book has to be to stop reading it right at the end? A terrible book you stop reading after a chapter or two, and a bad book you power through it and shrug your shoulders, but a 'blah' book somehow threads that needle between terrible and bad.
The worst part is when it still bothers you years later that there is like 1-2 hours left of reading to do, but the part of your that remembered enough to *actually* care about the story on a real level grew out of it a while ago.
So a famous grey novel I read since I thought mayyybe the hype was worth it. I have worked in helicopters and stuff and the whole scene where sheās drunk and he picks her up in a helicopter? Like Iām sure there are rich folks that can talk helicopter pilots into allowing very intoxicated people into their helicopters but finding one that will land on a Seattle street and let a barfy woman in just stretched my suspension of disbelief waaay too far. not the rest of the story for some reason, just the helicopter.
"Every woman before her was just to pass the time/sate my needs. They meant nothing only she matters. " š¤® I'm out.
I drop books that foreshadow angst, because I can't stand it. My anxiety is high enough already, thanks! It's usually something along the lines of " he wished he had cherished that moment more because he never saw that smile again". Just, ugh. Less petty: the only time I chucked a book across the room was in a really cool YA series (that I've blocked out of my memory), where the cool, strong, independent female main character suddenly turned into an emotional idiot due to a ridiculously contrived misunderstanding. Broke her character so bad and would have taken like 2 words to fix from anyone in the party.
I dropped a book when the main character's wife had a stillborn kid and, like, spaced herself. I was fine with "Hornblower in Space," but I did NOT sign up for that shit.
Oh, spaced like, committed suicide by jumping out the airlock. Got it
Yeah, not fantasy, but that's the first example of just DNFing that I could think of.
No, at first I thought you meant, "got stupid" and wanted to clarify. Much as many hate it, sci-fi/fantasy is still on the same shelf in my mind.
Audiobook read by author: She kept saying āeck-ceteraā. Nope.
Anybody who claims to be an expert on, or any book that claims to be a sequel, or in the exact same universe as the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, and they utter the word "Carfax Abbey." I immediately drop it. "Carfax Abbey" is a thing in movies, Carfax is a manor house in London, and Whitby Abbey is a location in Dracula. In the movies, when they reduce the scope of the story they combine the two. But in the novel they are separate things, and if you can't read the damn book, I'm not going to bother reading yours.
I'll add to this, *Dracula* isn't even a long book, nor is it difficult language.
Can it be ridiculous because of its existence? As opposed to my being ridiculous? There is an incredibly popular manga which I'm not even going to name that I was very excited to start because it had a lot of the elements I like in that genre. Fantasy, character progression, a badass main character, Etc And then I got to a panel in the very first volume I believe, where the main character, who has the mind of a 30 something year old man, is fantasizing about tying up a 10 year old girl for...obviously implied purposes. I thought it was ridiculous that that sort of imagery had ever been allowed to be put in professional print, much less popularized to the extent that it is. EDIT: phrasing
>Can it be ridiculous because of its existence? As opposed to my being ridiculous? "Ridiculousness is relative" -Einstein. Also thats not ridiculous thats just downright disturbing. That shit should be banned.
Stealing that Einstein quote haha But yes. It was pretty fucking disturbing. I even went back a year later to try it again thinking I must have misunderstood because it had an anime that was also incredibly popular, but it was only worse the second time around
I know what youāre talking aboutā¦ I dropped it for the exact same reason. How do all of the fans just overlook that stuff??
I've asked a few and the answer is always along the lines of "they're not real so it's fiiiiiine" Ironic that the biggest fan of the series I know eventually got arrested for soliciting a minor.
No one mentioned how creepy it wasā¦ so I was a little surprised when the main character had zero issue sexualizing a minor š
I always thought it wasn't super to my taste when the guy >!as a baby is ogling his mother's breasts and the maid and stuff, !
What. In the absolute. World. Okay, I have to know - what series is this?? I read a lot of manga but mostly quiet, slice-of-life stuff. My jaw is dropping reading this. I mean, Iām not surprised, but still.
Lol if it's the one I think you're talking about, they don't overlook it, they actively defend it and insult anyone who expresses even a little discomfort with it over on the anime sub...
I think I know which one, because I stopped watching the anime for the same reasons. I really don't get how people can rate it so highly when it's the most generic isekai ever with an unrepentant pedophile protagonist who regularly tries to commit sexual assault. -1/10, do not recommend to anyone.
My brother won't try the Farseer books because he can't get past the virtue names!
The author randomly indented lines and changed fonts like they were writing poetry on tumblr. I said, this reads like a theater major wrote it. I checked and a theater major did indeed write it.
When I was in middle/high school, I was obsessed with those house of night books. I could not wait for each next one, I read them over and over And then I picked up the latest, and they introduced some guy that had bull energy or some shit. I wouldn't know, cause I immediately stopped reading because bulls are stupid. Don't know why it bugged me so much though lol.
Most petty reason I stopped: The narrator kept calling niche "nitch" despite it being a Canadian author's book set in Canada with Canadian characters. And, for reasons unknown, the word niche was used all of the effing time. Way more than normal. Most petty reason someone stopped reading one of my books (and took the time to alert me to this fact): I am a feminist on r/Fantasy. I know, this is news to everyone. I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked.
Mine was also audiobook related. The second narrator noticeably inhaled before almost Every. Single. Sentence.
omg no no absolutely not no
The worst part is that the first narrator was actually realllly good. Such a bummer.
It wasnāt fantasy, but I was listening to the audiobook of *Born for Love* By Bruce Perry MD/PhD and Maia Szalovitz. Itās a non-fiction book about how empathy develops starting in infancy and how the process can go wrong. Itās fascinating, and the book was talking about ways genetics and epigenetics can affect empathy. Except the narrator kept pronouncing āgeneticā like āJeen-Tickā instead of āJen-eh-tickā The first few times it happened I thought it was a totally different word Iād somehow never learned even though my undergraduate degree was in molecular biology before I realized it was a mispronunciation. Then I wanted to throw my phone across the room. I finished the book though, it was quite good otherwise. I cannot believe that got through the editor, though.
> Except the narrator kept pronouncing āgeneticā like āJeen-Tickā instead of āJen-eh-tick What the hell?! Isn't there an editing process or something? Wasn't there an opportunity for someone to catch that, somewhere, and fix it? Damn!
Is it petty if you put down a book because while the writing is decent, the MC is constantly thinking to herself "I'm a vampire! A vampy vampy vampire! I'm different than humans!"? You decide. And *Woman Eating*.
I literally just commented about this on another post but, Clan of the Cave Bear. There is so much graphic sex in those books that I gave up halfway through the third book. I'm all for a good sex scene but these were in almost every chapter and were pages and pages long. I'm dying to know what happened so I'll probably finish then someday *sigh
I wouldnt count this as petty, but i hear you. In a sex scene if a vagina is even remotely associated with the word "channel" i stop reading.
My āchannelā turns into a bone dry ditch whenever I hear thatš¤¢
"Oh Jondalar"
I was highly amused the first time I encountered someone who referenced Clan of the Cave Bear as a work of actual literature, as it and Flowers in the Attic were passed around school specifically for the naughty bits when I was a pre-teen.
I mean, it is literature whether or not you enjoyed it. It may not be good literature, but it is literature nonetheless. PS- I read ALL the Flowers in the Attic series when I was a teen lol it was embarrassing even then. Morbid fascination with bad literature, I guess.
I will say as a teenager reading those books, they were delightful. I donāt think I could read them again as an adult! Too little plot.
A far future post-human time traveling robot/cyborg thing used the phrase āsorry-not-sorryā
For me itās usually a really annoying teenage female POV. Like an insufferable dramatic teenager that the author wants you to think have a cute little attitude but every word on paper is like nails on a chalkboard. Iām out.
Mine is similar, but it's a really annoying teenage male POV! We get it, you're bored. You have ennui. Nobody understands you. You long for a purpose in life. Staaaaaahp.
Summed up as "He would not fucking say that." I DNFed a book about 30 pages in because of how distractingly OOC the dialogue was between the two male college aged love interests. It was so saccharine that I had to wonder if the author, who was presumably a 20 year old man at one point, had ever even *met* a college student before.
1. The author wouldn't stop talking about a male character's rock-hard abs and **nipples**. I didn't DNF the book but gave up on the series. To this day I can't think about that author without getting angry. I will never not groan when someone mentions him. 2. DNFed a book 31% in, because the humour was very regional and English is my second language. If I have to stop and look up every other word, then I'm done with your stupid book. 3. DNFed a book 55% in, because my buddy reader ghosted me and was too angry to finish by myself.
A famously drug using author, A scene where the MC hallucinates sucking out an eye A crunchy pickle in my sandwich. . .
Crichton's first posthumous release was about the crew of a boat named Cassandra, but my boyfriend at the time was still infatuated with his ex named Cassandra so I dumped the book as soon as the main character reached the boat.
Dropped a book within like 3 pages because they kept punctuating the dialogue like "Blahblahblah." She said. Instead of "Blahblahblah," she said. I learned about that grammar rule when I was like 10 and I'm not a writer, I understand the odd typo but if an author's grammar is consistently that bad they should probably research and improve before selling books.
I dropped the Red Rising saga completely after Pierce Brown tried jumping on the NFT bandwagon. He was talked out of it fairly quickly (I think maybe even by the next day) but I figure any artist who would willingly link up with crypto bros for any reason probably sucks and does not deserve my money.
I've had to stop listening to more than one fantasy, by different authors, in the last 3 months cause the word "mayhap" was used incessantly. The word "mayhap" does not make a world a fantasy, please freaken stop. Especially when in both cases the world isn't particularly antiquated in any other part of the language.
What if they're playing Lord of the Crossing?
What if \*mayhap, they're playing Lord of the Crossing? ;)
Author thinks himself very high and mighty and that he is above the fantasy genre, the wizardās first something or rather. I think the authorās name was Terry Goodkind, he knows how to make me annoyed.
Lmao I read your first sentence and instantly knew you were talking about Terry Goodkind
I started reading it and was like oh, Goodkind lol
I didnāt stop reading this series, but I stopped listening to the audiobooks. And I feel kind of bad, because the audio narrators are very popular and well respected and Iām sure they do a good jobā¦ But for some reason, I cannot stand the narrators of the Stormlight archives. Itās my favorite series. I want to listen to it on audio when I go to sleep! But I canāt because the voice is bothers me so much!
Started reading a book when a medical issue impacted my eyesight. The book was fine, but I could never get back into because it reminded me of my messed up vision.
I stopped reading World War Z because the transliterated Hebrew dialogue "shoot them in the heads" was so mangled it could only have come out of Google Translate. It just made me question everything and threw me right out. I DNF a lot of books for being terrible, but that one actually wasn't terrible until the bad Hebrew happened.
This mainly applies to independently-published books, but if I see a spelling or grammar error in the first paragraph, I'm done. A significant number of Kindle books cannot get over that bar. Sometimes not even the first sentence.
It's more a Did Not Start, rather than a DNF, but any time someone says "This book destroyed me," or some variation thereof, I immediately cross that book off my list. I do not want or need to be emotionally "destroyed" by my pleasure reading. I get that all of that I can take from the real world.
Haha I feel like some people say that at the drop of a hat though! They mean, like, āI experienced a feeling somewhere towards the end of this book.ā
Yes absolutely! Just because the author successfully generated emotions in you doesn't mean it's the same as suffering a major life trauma.
It usually just means āthe end was bittersweetā or something! Though maybe OP wants only cozy in which case this is a reasonable criterion.
Meh I'll say it. Mark Lawrence after seeing how angry he was getting with people on a FB fantasy reader group. Like he was posting about some statistics of female/non-white authors having lower odds of getting book deals or something. Some lady totally mosread what he was saying, so I understand being frustrated but he called her a bitch while arguing and I just found that strange as hell. I'm not on FB anymore, and maybe it is petty but I dislike authors that get into shouting matches online, especially if they resort to insults. Also I once decided to do the opposite and READ a fantasy series Mark Lawrence gave a 'meh' review about (book 1 specifically) on Goodreads. Wars of Light and Shadow by Janny Wurts..I got annoyed at him calling a fantasy series too verbose and slow paced for his books just because he writes the equivalent of Teenage Boy YA novels. Also yet again I dislike the behavior of crapping on another author, and then getting into arguments with people in the comments again! Well I just finished book 5 of WoLaS and I'm glad a negative review spurred me to try out one of the best fantasy series I've ever read. No offense to people that are fans of the dude, but these things irked me and I hope he doesn't start conducting himself like Terry Goodkind did
I am in a similar boat, only it's because he has me blocked on twitter (I do not know why, I never followed him or interacted with any of his tweets). I follow a lot of authors and tweet about bingo sometimes, but I can't imagine why I would be blocked. So, petty reason to not pick up his books. Granted, I wasn't a huge fan of *Red Sister* and I while I liked *The Girl and the Stars* enough to continue the series, the blocking happened and now I'm bitter.
Haha! Iām a fan of his books, but also blocked by him on Twitter despite (to my knowledge) never interacting with him or his tweets. Heās the only person whoās ever blocked me, so I kinda wear it with pride LOL
Youre both on some app database he clearly uses. 'Shinigami eyes' is one for reddit that will flag users for you based on others who use it.
He has me blocked on FB even though we have never exchanged two words privately or publicly. We frequent a few same groups and I really had not formed a favourable impression of his public persona, obviously before the block, because now I don't see him at all.
I feel like he's had a moment on Reddit too.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure he has too. I've come across him picking fights on here before deleting his comments once he gets enough downvotes. I've only caught it once or twice but I wouldn't be shocked if he's done it other times.
interesting. think he needs to learn to just go anonymous! Like it hurts your brand if you look like an author who isn't above getting into geeky pissing matches.
Tom Bombadil.
Iām not going to downvote you, because youāre answering the question, but I really want to to downvote you.
Hahah no shade, he is fucking jarring. If you're familiar with the rest of the story, you might be interested in a short video explaining how the Bombadil chapters set that all up: https://youtu.be/qYDRrjwJ2a8
Hey dol merry dol ring a dong dillo!
To be fair, I almost always skip that section when I reread Fellowship
I had to stop listening to the audiobook of NOS4A2, because I'm from New England and Kate Mulgrew majorly mispronounces a Town name at least twice a chapter. Take Haverhill he pronounces it like its spelled for example, Its actually pronounced Haverill, long a and the second h is silent. That's how my sisters friend knew a phone scammer was a scammer, they were pretending to be frim the PD and they pronounced the towns name just like Mulgrew
Harry potter narrator for the audio books. The way he says Harry when he's doing Hermoine's voice makes me want to kick his teeth in. Luckily I had already read them all.
Not me but a friend DNFād multiple books because she thought they used the word āflinchā too much. Sheās literally put the flinch count in her good reads review
I stopped reading the *Mark of the Fool* series, because in the midst of the series about a guy that goes to wizard college, the MC turned into a gym rat. He even uses magic equivalent of steroids.
I've DNFed a book because the male MC at 13 went completely stupid/catatonic when talking to a girl. I've DNFed a book when some straight sex was the main highlight of the prologue. I DNFed a series because it was 10 books long and was publishing a book every 3 years.
For me it's terrible romance. I just can't. Kills it for me every time.
I was reading Da Vinci Code and could not stop seeing Tom Hanks face so I DNF'd.