Introducing: The Incompletionist
Challenging Expectations, One Unfinished Book at a Time
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DNF. Did Not Finish.
An ignominious acronym for both reader and book alike. A book unworthy of being finished is even worse than being bad; it was a boring waste of time. A few unfinished reads are within the bounds of acceptability for a reader, but too many DNFs means that there’s something lacking in the reader. Any reader with too many unfinished books is fickle. Their irreverence towards the hard labor that goes into a published book is worth the scorn of mild, maybe even moderate disappointment!
But these are fallacies born of a bygone time for me.
Though I have no memory of that Pizza Hut reading program growing up, I had my own incentives for completing books. Since my mother taught me to read, I always had someone to talk to as I made my way through a book. In elementary and middle school, I received praise just for knowing how to read chapter books. I got to freely choose what I read independently and got treats from a treasure box if I completed enough of them. Books were an escape from the remedial monotony of DCPS, and teachers (for the most part) left me alone to do so1.
Everything changed once I started my freshman year at a private high school. There was now assigned reading over what used to be a free summer. Then I was faced with texts like Homer’s The Odyssey and Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations.2 These texts were not only unbearably long, they were also drier than saltines in sand. I faced pop quizzes that tested my fidelity to texts that I did not choose for myself. No matter how boring or laborious a book was to read, I was expected to finish it and retain enough information to have something meaningful to say. No matter that I had to get up at 6AM for an hour-long bus commute and got home after 8PM, the expectations for completion remained the same.
But I couldn’t give a fuck about A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court or The Canterbury Tales in Middle Fucking English if someone threatened my life.
There is hand-wringing around students no longer being able to meet the demands of a humanities education, but these worries are somewhat misdirected. I agree that public education in the United States is shit. A lot of my struggles my freshman year of high school were because of my public school system’s deplorably low expectations of me (and my classmates), only matched by its lack of resources. But something can also be said about the inflexibility of what is considered canon within Literature™ or how its merit is explained to students.3
Reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in 8th grade was easy, as was reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X the summer before 9th grade. But I couldn’t give a fuck about A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court or The Canterbury Tales in Middle Fucking English if someone threatened my life.4 Going to and fro from SE DC to Wisconsin Ave, I was drawn to the books that felt like it was applicable to my present condition. Sadly, Literature™ did not care much for being readily applicable to my lived experience.
Unable to change my circumstances, I learned to hide my DNFs from my instructors. I would resort to online resources like SparkNotes, and do my best to skim in vain hope that the odd paragraph I read to completion was the one needed for the next test or quiz. I sometimes relied on the mercy of those who read the books to completion, sheepishly exchanging my shame for the much needed help. When I found out that there were other students who shared my condition, there was immeasurable (and temporary) relief from my imposter syndrome that I was not alone. I was eventually able to catch up academically and settle into the middling C+/B- range, with the vain hope that my condition would change once I got to college.
But alas, I was a glutton for misery, choosing to become a student-athlete at a Division III school and to major in English.
It wasn’t until after I quit the football team did I began to finish some of the texts that were assigned for class, but by then the damage had been done. When I finished with my undergrad degree in English, I was burnt out from all the force-reading I had to endure. Unless I heard about the book within my own ecosystem of media and friends, I would only judge a book by the promise from a good cover or title. I’d buy a stack of books from the bookstore, only to get no further than the first chapter (if the book got opened at all). Worst of all, my brain began to show signs of fatigue from the force-reading.
I could only finish nonfiction books.
As a student, I had gotten into the practice of reading in a non-linear fashion, picking and choosing the pieces of text that bore the greatest importance to me or what I was trying to study. That was why I struggled to start a work of fiction. I wasn’t compelled to learn or remember everything in a book, so I could float over the words of a nonfiction book with ease now that I don’t have a deadline or assignment to complete. But as an adult, I didn’t want to treat fiction that way. Not now that I had the freedom to choose again. I wanted to replicate the joy and hyperfixation I had as a child that would leave shelves of finished books in my wake. This time, though, I wanted to appreciate every decision or happy accident with my adult sensibilities. I didn’t want to miss a thing, so if I started a novel, I had to finish it.
But something changed after I finally built up the gumption to read Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. I was absolutely enraptured by the play with form and font within and without that matryoshka doll of a book. It made use of every inch and margin of the book, encouraging you to bounce back and forth between the main text and the appendices. I was having a blast at first, but I began slowing down. Zampanò’s in-universe essay about the in-universe documentary, The Navidson Record, was enrapturing, but I slowly got disinterested in Johnny Truant’s storyline as a framing device for it all.
Then eventually, I willfully stopped reading it. And I felt fine.
I had gotten what I came for, and lost interest in the rest. Despite it being a novel, I was able to see it for its true worth: whatever I fucking like it to be. Hours, days, even years are invested into a single book. This is not in obligation to me, and I owe the book none in return. There would be no treasure box awaiting me at the end of the book. There would be no grade, GPA, or credit needed to move on to the next part of my day, month, or year. I didn’t have to explain to anyone why I didn’t finish or how far I had gotten into the book before dropping it.
It was liberating, and has started healing my relationship with reading. I now bounce around from text to text, starting them then setting them down for later or for never. I now grab books simply because there might be something in there that I’d like. And in the worst case scenario, I can turn a book into an art project that requires me to ripped pages from a book. I’m slowly recapturing the childlike glee at the possibilities a book holds since I realized that there is no right way to read a book.5 The practice borne of necessity to make it through school in the past has been a source of freedom in my present.
It is in this spirit of healing and liberation, I am announcing my monthly series, The Incompletionist! At the end of each month, I will share the books that I have opened and what I gained from them. There will be no page count or timeline around ever finishing these books. If I complete a book, you will not find out about it in this series.
As adults, many of us struggle to read like we did growing up for a multitude of reasons: burnout, neurodivergence, disability, mental health, being alive as the world and everyone in it slowly burns, etc. Read (or listen) in the way that feels best for you, and there’s no need to complete a certain number of books a month or year unless you’re sure it’s you want for yourself. Find a book for pleasure or utility, for guidance or inspiration, or maybe just out of curiosity. It is time that we read honestly and joyfully as we strive to enjoy our lives the best we can.
I look forward to sharing my list of unfinished books at the end of April.
Read more from Queen’s Muse!
I wasn’t allowed to read while the teacher was instructing the class, or while walking in line down the hallway.
I’m told that Great Expectations may be worth a revisit as an adult. We’ll see.
Another thing I don’t think was considered in The Atlantic article is the inflation of extracurriculars that students feel obligated to participate in to stand out amongst a competitive crowd of college applicants.
I’m sure A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is worth a revisit too. It’s the OG isekai.
This doesn’t include gross misinterpretations and appropriations. And there is a right way to handle any book you borrow from me (no ears, annotations, or highlights).