When to DNF a book (and how to stop without guilt)

DNF means "did not finish": a book you started and decided to put down. Every reader has some. Stopping is not failing at reading. It is choosing what to do with the reading time you have.

Signs it is time to stop

• You dread picking it up. At the time you usually read, you find something else to do.
• It has been "current" for weeks and you have not opened it.
• You are skimming to get to the end, not reading.
• You do not care what happens to anyone in it.
• It holds something you did not sign up for: a theme you would rather not read about right now. That is what content warnings are for.
• The only reason to go on is guilt, or the pages you have already read. Those pages are spent either way.

Signs to give it a little longer

• A slow start on purpose. Big fantasy and family sagas often spend their first chapters building the world.
• The wrong moment, not the wrong book. In a reading slump, even a book you would love can feel heavy. Setting it aside for later is not the same as giving up on it.
• Someone whose taste you share promised it gets better at a specific point. Read to that point, then decide.

Rules readers use to decide

• The rule of 50. The librarian Nancy Pearl's rule: give a book 50 pages. Over 50 years old, take your age away from 100 and give it that many pages instead: the more books behind you, the less time you owe one that is not working.
• A percentage. On an ebook, somewhere between 10 and 25%, ask yourself whether you want the rest.
• The "would I miss it?" test. If someone took the book away now, would you mind? If not, let it go.

None of them is the right one. Pick the one that sounds like you and keep to it, so you do not have to decide from scratch every time.

Should you rate a book you did not finish?

Many readers do, and it helps: a rating for the part you read tells your future self why you stopped. Note how far you got and what made you put it down; that is fair to the book too. Four of our reading journal prompts are written for exactly this.

DNF in Storyfeel

• Mark it. Open the book and set its status to DNF. The finish date becomes Stop reading date. To save, Storyfeel asks for the start date, the stop date and a rating; half a star is the lowest.
• See it in Calendar. A DNF shows paler, from the day you started to the day you stopped.
• See it in Stats. Your DNF books have their own count, and the star chart shows them apart: The paler part of each bar is books you set aside. Their rating counts too — we asked you for it when you saved them.
• Find them. In Stories, the status filter brings them together.
• Series and goals. Next in my series, on My Journey, skips a DNF: you left it on purpose, so it is not waiting for you. Your Reading challenge counts only Completed books, and in Book Bingo a DNF leaves its square plain so you can link another book.
• From Goodreads. Goodreads has no DNF status, so readers make a shelf for it. When you import your Goodreads library, books on a shelf called something like "dnf", "did-not-finish" or "abandoned" arrive as DNF.

Questions

Does a DNF count as a book read?

Not for your Reading challenge, which counts only Completed books. It stays in Stories with the rest of your books, and its rating counts in your Stats.

Can I skip a book in a series and keep going?

Yes. Mark it DNF and Next in my series moves on to the next one.

What if I change my mind?

A status is never final: change it whenever you go back to the book. Many readers try a DNF again years later and love it.

Is this on the free plan?

Yes. The DNF status and everything above have no free-plan limits.

To keep the books you finished, and the ones you did not, try Storyfeel free.