Finished week 52 last night. I kept a simple spreadsheet: genre, page count, days to finish, and whether I abandoned it. Total was 52 books, 13,842 pages, 9 abandoned (17%). Nonfiction stuck better than fiction — only 2 DNFs vs 7.
Sci-fi was my worst category, which shocked me because I thought I loved it. I also noticed audiobooks I finished in under a week had the highest recall. Anyone else track reading data like this? What metric actually predicts whether you finish a book?
I count paused over 60 days as abandoned.
What counts as abandoned for audiobooks? I've paused some for months and never gone back.
The vibe column idea is tempting. I already rate books 1-5 after finishing, but that's too late to help.
I track pages per day and a one-word vibe. Over 14 weeks, the best predictor was whether I looked forward to the next session. If I dreaded picking it up twice in a row, I abandoned it.
That beat genre, page count, and even my initial excitement at checkout. Your sci-fi slump might be a vibe mismatch rather than a category problem. Try logging 'want to continue?' as yes/no for a month. I bet the pattern jumps out faster than genre averages do.
Also curious whether your 9 abandoned books clustered around a certain month.
Standalones mostly. I kept picking bleak new releases when I wanted comfort rereads. That mismatch did it.
Throat-clearing is the prefect term. I now give books 50 pages, no guilt. My finish rate went from 40% to 68%.
17% abandon rate is way lower than mine. I bail on maybe 1 in 3 nonfiction books if the first chapter is all throat-clearing.
I ran a 36-book year and my DNF rate was 25%, but the surprise was that it tracked my sleep way more than genre — any week I averaged under 6.5 hours, I abandoned almost everything, even thrillers I’d normally inhale. The counterintuitive bit for me was audiobooks: the ones I finished in 4 days had the worst recall, because I was listening while walking and my brain was basically on airplane mode; the ones I stretched over 2-3 weeks and re-listened to a chapter had way better retention.
What fixed it was a 10-minute rule after dinner: read print, phone in another room, and if I’m still not hooked by page 15, it goes to the donate pile. That cut my DNFs from 9 to 3 over the next 24 books, and weirdly it also killed my evening snacking because my hands were busy.
Did your abandoned books bunch up in certain weeks, like holidays or stressful work stretches, or was it pretty evenly spread?
My weirdest correlation wasn’t genre, it was sleep: any week I averaged under 6 hours I’d stall around page 30 on everything and decide the book was trash, then the same type of book would click on a 7.5-hour week. I fixed it by parking my current read where the after-dinner snack bowl used to sit and doing 10 pages at the counter before I’m allowed to scroll—since I started, that’s replaced the 8-10pm grazing most nights, and I probably added 15 books a year just from that swap.
I also only allow one paper book and one audio at a time; the second I break that rule I finish nothing. Did you track sleep or stress next to your spreadsheet? I’d bet your sci-fi slump was more tired-brain than category.
The sci-fi thing doesn’t surprise me after hanging around here a few years—there was a thread last spring about “genre loyalty” vs. actual reading mood. I added a column for why I picked a book: excited, recommended, or challenge/list.
My DNFs clustered almost entirely in the “should read” pile, especially sci-fi classics. The ones I loved were mostly novellas or series I already knew. Maybe split your sci-fi into “chosen” vs. “assigned by past me” for year two?
Curious whether your abandoned ones were the books you’d owned longest.
Your sci-fi surprise made me check my own spreadsheet. I added a “where/format” column: paper at breakfast, audio only on my new afternoon walks, e-reader in waiting rooms.
My DNFs were almost all e-reader impulse downloads — I never got the “place” association. Audiobooks finished 80% when paired with a specific route,
Curious how you defined DNF in the spreadsheet — did you log “paused” separately from “abandoned”? My own log looked like 18% DNF until I split those out; most were mood mismatches I eventually finished. Also, 13,842 pages / 52 books is ~266 pages average.
Did your nonfiction skew shorter or longer than the fiction you actually finished? That length mismatch might explain the 2 vs 7 split more than genre.
The sci-fi betrayal stings — my DNF pile is basically my plateau in paper form 😅
My DNF pile is basically a seep chart too—wild how that tracks. 😅
I track my reading similarly, and the thing that shocked me was format: I finish library ebooks way more than books I own, because the due date is a fake deadline. Owned physical books are where my DNFs pile up — no pressure, so I drift. Did you note source (library/owned/borrowed) on your spreadsheet?
I’m also back at it with weight stuff after regaining, and I’ve learned my “abandonment rate” spikes when I pick things because I think I should, not because I’m actually curious. Same with books and food plans. Curious if your 7 fiction DNFs were mostly owned or borrowed.
That sci-fi DNF stat is exactly the vibe of the old comfort-genre thread—turns out we all lie to ourselves a little 😅
Small-town librarian here — my DNF pattern was all about format, not genre. Paper books from the Friends of the Library sale? I finish those. E-books on my phone? I abandon at 20%.
I think it’s because paper shows me the physical stack shrinking, while my phone just says “47 min left” and I lose the plot. Did your spreadsheet track format at all?
Also, my library’s 3-week due date has caused more skim-finishes than I’d like to admit.
Sci-fi was my worst too—turns out I love the idea of it more than the actual reading.
My own spreadsheet is embarrassingly basic: book, format, and a one-word mood at the start. Since the kids moved out I’ve been walking daily and cooking actual meals, and I’ve realized my DNFs spike when I pick a book to match an aspirational version of myself, not my actual evening brain.
Did you note whether your 9 abandoned were mostly borrowed/library titles? I’ll quit a due-date book way faster than one I own, which tells me it’s pressure, not the book.
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