| Yesterday I talked about the pain of reading a book that doesn’t resonate, and asked readers to share how many books they’ve DNF’d or rated less than 4 stars over the past year. Apologies if you replied and I wasn’t able to get back to you, I must have really struck a chord because I was overwhelmed with responses!
Readers described the number of books they’ve DNF’d or given less than 4 stars ranging from 0, 3, 10, to over 30, and many readers reported that they’d even lost count— that’s a lot of time and money wasted on books that aren’t right for you!
Here are some of the common bad habits we see in readers who end up spending more time than they wish on books that don’t resonate:
- Not DNF’ing enough (or finishing every book you start). While the goal is to minimize our DNFs with better screening upfront, this is one of the most common mistakes we see. It might seem counterintuitive based on my last email, but many readers have a habit of finishing every book they start, or not quitting when they should. If you’ve ever felt like you’re ‘slogging through’ a book, you know what I mean. Of course, some books start off slow and then finish strong, or it could also be that you’re not in the right headspace or mood for a specific type of book, and it’s perfectly fine to set a book down and go back to it later, but many readers voice that they actually regret ‘pushing through’ many of the books they finished reading. If they’d DNF’d those books instead, they’d have more time to read books they truly enjoy. At BookBrowse, we also encourage readers to take chances and give books a chance that are outside of their normal reading comfort zone, so as a reader if you’re never DNF’ing, you might be missing out on titles beyond your current preferences.
- Over-relying on hype and popularity. I referenced this yesterday as well, but just because a book is popular doesn’t mean that it’s right for you. In fact, there’s not much you can really know about the quality of a hyped up book, except that the publisher has a good publicity team. You have to understand whether or not a book will work for your tastes, even if it’s well written or broadly acclaimed, and avoid the false promise of ‘I see this book everywhere so it must be good.’
- Relying on surface level reviews and recommendations. Similar to the point above, if a book appears on a best of year list or a celebrity book club, or even if it comes from a recommendation source you generally trust, that alone is generally not enough information for you to know if you will enjoy reading it. You need to have enough information about the book and how it aligns with your reading preferences to make an educated guess about whether or not it will be right for you.
- Treating all recommendations as equal and not curating trusted book recommendation sources. For some, managing their TBR list is a hobby, but others describe an ‘ocean of recommendations’ they have to weed through. Social media and review platforms like GoodReads can be useful, but the platforms themselves are incentivized to keep you scrolling as long as possible, not to get you the information you need quickly. If you’re not curating trusted reviewers and recommendation sources, the recommendations can easily become overwhelming and counterproductive. Another interesting example is book clubs: some readers say their book club never leads them astray, while others have reported that many of their least favorite reads have come from their book club. It all depends on how aligned the club is to your reading preferences. Of course, if you want inspiration outside of your preferences, that’s great as well, as long as it's intentional.
- Starting books without adequately researching them first. Besides not DNF’ing enough, this is the second biggest mistake we see readers making, and it relates to the other mistakes I mentioned as well: even if a trusted source of good book recommendations has suggested a title, that doesn't mean it will align to your preferences. With a few minutes of research (and maybe even reading a preview of the book), you’ll be much more likely to know if the book is one you’ll enjoy, saving time and money in the long run.
If you feel like you’re DNF’ing too many books, or spending too much time on books that you’re not enjoying, there’s a good chance that you have one or multiple of these bad habits.
One skill that’s essential for breaking these habits is being able to understand and articulate your reading preferences, or put another way, what makes a book enjoyable for you. While this article was originally written to describe how we choose read alikes, Nancy Pearl’s Four Doorways are a great method for articulating which aspects of a book resonate with you (and by extension, which aspects you’ll enjoy in future titles):
https://www.bookbrowse.com/blogs/editor/index.cfm/2012/6/14/BookBrowses-ReadAlikes-and-Nancy-Pearls-Rule-of-Four
This framework can also help explain why you may have read two different books in a similar genre or with a similar premise, yet had very different experiences with them. If you feel like you have a good grasp of the kind of books you enjoy (or why some books don’t resonate), tomorrow I’ll be sharing research techniques you can use to better understand if a book will be a good fit for you before you start reading.
Thanks, Nick
P.S. I'm going to be sending more emails this week talking about this problem and how it relates to BookBrowse, if you don't want to receive these emails but stay subscribed to our regular newsletters, click here. |
No comments:
Post a Comment
Keep a civil tongue.