Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish back in June 2010. It is currently hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl and, as is stated on the blog, it was “born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.”

Hello, reader!

I have a confession to make. Though I often encourage people to stop reading a book they aren’t enjoying (too many books, too little time!), I am v. bad at DNFing books. I don’t know if it’s a completionist thing or I just like to torture myself, but I can think of two books that I have given up on from my entire life as a reader. TWO! Which is something I really need to work on because forcing myself to complete books that I’m not enjoying has knocked me into severe reading slumps before. Looking at you, The Bone Ships… which I am still, technically, reading 😵

That being said, I’m doing a bit of a twist on this week’s TTT. The theme is the last ten books I’ve abandoned, but, instead, I’m going to give you the ten books I should have given up on! And let’s hope I can give up this need to finish every book I start.

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• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson*
• The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil*
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• Demon Girl by Penelope Fletcher
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Incubus Dreams by Laurell K. Hamilton
• Airframe by Michael Crichton
• Marked by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast

The two books marked with an asterisk are my two, legit DNFs. But all of these books have one of two things in common:

1. They were so dull I could feel my brain atrophying.
2. The tropes were rage inducing.

So, though I struggled through most of these books, I definitely should have used my better judgment and just let them go. After all, life is too short to waste time on bad books.

(And just in case one of your faves is on this list, please know that when I say “bad”, I mean that as my own personal opinion!)

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So what are some books you just couldn’t finish recently? Did you do your own TTT? Let me know in the comments!

And, as always, happy reading!