I Tracked Every Book I Abandoned This Year and the Pattern Was Embarrassing

I kept a list this year of every book I started and did not finish. Not to shame myself — I made peace with DNF-ing years ago — but because I was curious whether there was a pattern. There was, and it was not the one I expected.

I assumed I abandoned books because they were bad. Looking at the list, almost none of them were bad. What they had in common was that I started them at the wrong time. Dense literary fiction picked up during a stressful week. A slow-burn romance started while I was already halfway through two other things. A doorstop history begun the night before a trip.

The actual variable was my life, not the book

Once I saw it written down it was obvious. The books that got finished were not better written. They were the ones I picked up on a quiet weekend with nothing else competing. Which means half my did-not-finish pile is not a verdict on the book at all — it is a note about the week I tried to read it in.

So I have started doing something slightly ridiculous that has worked well: I keep two piles. One is for books that need real attention, and I only start those when I actually have a stretch of quiet. The other is for books I can pick up and put down. Most of my abandoned list turned out to belong in the first pile and got started from the second.

If you have a shelf of half-read books making you feel guilty, it might be worth asking when you started each one rather than whether it was any good. Mine were mostly innocent.

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