Recently I did something extremely out-of-character: I DNFed a book.  To DNF (did not finish) is a policy encouraged by many in the reading community, and it makes a good deal of sense.  After all, life is short and there are only so many books even the speediest reader will be able to finish in his or her lifetime.  Especially when you have other commitments, as we all do.  (Oh, those pesky jobs, taking up eight or more hours per day of prime reading time!)  If you’re not enjoying a book, it’s only logical to set it aside and move on to something that will bring you more pleasure, joy, education or a combination thereof in your limited reading hours.  It’s what smart readers do.

Still… for all I know that DNFing occasionally is a wise policy, I usually can’t bring myself to do it.  In the past I’ve declared that my policy is to give a book 50 pages, and if I’m still not enjoying it, to abandon the book.  By 50 pages I should be able to tell if I’m going to like something, and I’ve given the author a chance to work out any kinks in the opening chapters.  Yet I find this an almost impossible policy to keep.  I’ve been known to stubbornly insist on finishing a book that I truly hated – The Sunshine When She’s Gone being the primary example.  I detested that book from the very beginning.  I found the writing trite, the plot unbelievable (not in a good way) and the characters loathsome.  Yet I persisted and darnit, I finished that book.  (It was only a little over 200 pages long.  By the time I got to page 50 I was a quarter of the way through the book.  Had it been a longer book, I believe I would have abandoned it.)

So I was surprised at myself for the ease with which I abandoned Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, by Dr. Marc Weissbluth.  I was still in the first chapter; I hadn’t even reached page 50.  All it took was one sentence: “Later, I will explain how these fatigued, fussy brats are also more likely to become fat kids.”  Oh, you will, will you?  Not to me, thanks.  No pediatrician who uses the terms “fussy brats” or “fat kids” is going to get a moment more of my time, no matter how good his advice.  I shut the book (a bit violently, I’ll admit) and promptly placed the book on my stack of library returns.  I didn’t glance at it again until several days later when I put the stack on the kitchen counter for hubby to return – he works a block from the library, which also has a cafe he likes to frequent, so he nicely runs my checkout-and-return errands.  I was a bit amazed, and more than a bit impressed, that I didn’t feel the slightest twinge of guilt or the merest prickle of curiosity about the rest of the book.  I guess that gratuitously unkind language about children can go on my list of things that will prompt me to abandon a book immediately, and with zero guilt.  That list is now… one item.

On top of DNFing Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, I also sort of abandoned another book last week: another sleep training manual, Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems, by Dr. Richard Ferber.  As I mentioned in this post, we’ve been working on sleep training Peanut, and I reserved both books at the library in order to explore different methods.  (We actually used the Ferber method to sleep train Peanut when she was about six months old, although we didn’t know it – we were just following the routine our then-pediatrician suggested.  I do not, however, plan to “Ferberize” Nugget – but that’s a subject for another blog altogether.)  But sleep training has been going well.  We saw progress very quickly – only a few nights after we started gently but firmly communicating to Peanut that she must go to bed at bedtime and stay in bed all night.  In fact, we’d already cleared the hurdle before my book reserves even came into my pickup library.  Still, I thought, I’d read Ferber’s book anyway.  It couldn’t hurt to have more information, and I’d be armed with knowledge if Peanut regressed again.  The book sat on my kitchen counter for three weeks while Peanut angelically went to bed as directed and stayed there.  And I found that I didn’t really want to read the Ferber book at the moment.  It wasn’t capturing my attention – already – and I hadn’t even opened it yet.  I told hubby, half-jokingly, that I was nevertheless afraid to return it to the library, because the second I did, Peanut would start throwing tantrums at bedtime again.  (The past three weeks have been so peaceful.)  I honestly contemplated renewing the book just as insurance.  In the end, I decided not to live in fear of my toddler and reminded myself that I could always check the book out again if necessary.  And I sent it back to the library with hubby.

All this book abandonment feels strange.  I’d like to say it’s freeing – maybe it is, in a way.  It was nice, albeit a bit foreign-feeling, to admit to myself that I wasn’t interested in reading the Ferber book at the moment and release myself from the obligation I felt to read it just because it happened to be sitting on my kitchen counter.  And I felt strangely powerful when I abandoned Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child because I disapproved of the author’s language choices.  I don’t see myself becoming an inveterate book-abandoner anytime soon.  But it is nice to know that I have the wherewithal to draw a line and stick with it, and that I can toss aside a book that doesn’t interest me with only a little bit of guilt.

Do you abandon books, or do you feel compelled to finish a book once you start?