The Red House Mystery and Thoughts on DNF

The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne

I was a big Winnie the Pooh fan in elementary school. There was a Disney store at the mall and I spent a lot of time and money there. I had stuffed animals, charm bracelets, t-shirts - you name it. But somehow I didn't know A.A. Milne, the Winnie the Pooh author, had written a mystery book until my mom told me about it.

Despite reading a lot, and reading consistently, I feel like it's sometimes a slog to get through the first chapter of books. I try to start relatively blind, without reading the jacket copy or back cover summary. But some first chapters throw so much at me that I then have to pause and read a summary just to know what is to come. It can help me understand what these characters are gearing up to do. Sometimes.

The first chapter of this book was one of the most boring things I'd read, but I know some mysteries start at a snail's pace to lure you into a false sense of security. However, after meeing half a dozen characters and not being able to remember their names, I was feeling a bit lost. At the end of the chapter, a new character is introduced with the same last name as who I was thinking of as the main character, and there was no mention of their relation or if it was a joke that they had the same name. All I could think was, this is fiction! Use any name you want! (Authors using very similar names is a pet peeve of mine.)

I started chapter two and there were a handful of new characters introduced in the first chapter, so I knew I needed to take a break. I decided to peek at some reviews to see if it was worth sticking with.

On Goodreads, the book has an average rating of 3.68 stars. Usually, that would be enough to convince me to keep on. It has more 4 star reviews than 5, but the 1 star ratings lured me in. I started reading a few and found the reviewers had many of the same complaints I already had, just a chapter and a page in. They mentioned it wasn't worth the read and so... I stopped.

It's taken me a lot to DNF (Did Not Finish) a book. I used to rarely stop reading before finishing a book. I actually remember one of the first times that happened back in May 2008. I blogged about it on my now-unpublished "Allison Writes" blog, while talking about juggling writing for a creative writing workshop and reading for fun:

"And one is the WORST book I have ever attempted to read, and I hate to mention the name here to even give it the tiniest bit of recognition, but it's Jonathan Tropper's The Book of Joe and it suuuuuuuuuuuuuucks more than anything I can imagine. The sentences are insane. My two faves:

(Runner up)
I take a deep breath, but the tears continue to come, blurring my vision, and I have to quickly pull over onto the anorexic shoulder of the highway, choking back an astonished sob as I throw the car into park.
What the hell is an anorexic shoulder?! I've only had two fiction classes, but in both we've learned to make things NOT sound like writing. And anyone who enjoys reading knows it's better to get sucked up into the story, not to be aware you're reading a book. If that's not pure "writing" then I don't know what is. I didn't get sucked in at all. The character is a jackass who tries to act macho, so I called his bluff as soon as he choked back his astonished sob.

(FIRST PLACE WINNER FOR ALL OF TIME!!!)
Just before I passed out, their fuzzy silhouettes appeared to touch in a tentative embrace, but I'd barely noted the illusion when unconsciousness dispensed with the foreplay and hungrily consummated our union.
Tell me that didn't make you laugh. This guy needs to put down the thesaurus! Big words don't make him sound smart, they make him sound pompous. And the whole sexual reference? Might be clever if properly done, but it just didn't work here. Then again I've never hungrily consummated my union with sleep, so he might be describing that moment perfectly.

I made it to page 59 - the page after the 1st place sentence, and could go no further. I want a ribbon for making it that far, please. I should have read the author reviews first. One chick-lit author says "You really fall in love with Joe. By the end I wanted to have his babies!" I think I lost brain cells just reading that..."

Clearly I'm still holding a grudge if I can remember the first book I DNF and wanted to find the exact quotes to prove why... But I digress!

Not long after that, I decided to give books 100 pages before deciding if I should keep on or stop. But 100 pages is a lot. Everything I've ever learned in fiction/novel/flash writing is to hook readers immediately, and I try my hardest to do that in my own writing. So why am I not holding other authors to that standard? Just because they happened to get published? Nah. So I lowered it to 50 pages, and that held up for a long time. 

But lately, I don't have the patience. I'll give you a chapter or a few pages depending on my mood. However, there are too many books out there to read, and so many that I'm sure will grab me right away. And if there aren't, that's okay too! I'll spend my time writing my own stories, or crafting, or baking bread. I don't want to waste time on books that aren't worth it anymore (though I'll admit I still hate-read some authors, but that's another rant). 

Last year, I started a DNF shelf on Goodreads. I want to have a record of the books I couldn't get through so I don't keep picking them up and trying again. While I believe in the idea of the right book at the right time, the titles on these shelves aren't those that I'd want to give another try any time soon. But I also don't want to rate them 1 star just because I couldn't get into them, so this allows me to file them without rating them, just to play fair.

Feminist Lit by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I thought it would be nice to start the new year reading some books that light a fire within me during a time when I'd much rather hunker down and continue staying up late doomscrolling and eating holiday treats.

These books spelled out things that have been on my mind more than ever, and in a way that was so easy to understand - and to feel understood. I especially loved the author's take on Ms. over Mrs. - I will die on that hill. Good for you if you don't mind being called Mrs. once you're married, but I don't see why the Miss/Ms./Mrs. distinction even exists, considering there is only Mr. for men. There's no need to classify people by their marriage status when you refer to them. That's why I call everyone Ms., though I will write Mrs. if I know that's what they prefer.

I also loved the discussion on clothes and toys for babies. There's no reason to have clothes for baby boys and baby girls when they wear things for a month (if you're lucky) before growing out of them anyway. I remember taking my son to a store when he was just a few months old and he was wearing a gray onesie with white stars on it. A woman in front of me in the checkout line started talking about my cute little girl and seemed offended when I said he was a boy - are gray and stars feminine? And if they are, what does it matter?

Something I'd never really thought of was the author's idea that, "if we truly depended on biology as the root of social norms, then children would be identified as their mother's rather than their father's because when a child is born, the parent we are biologically certain of is the mother." With all the arguments about two heterosexual parent households and placing blame on single mothers for being *checks notes* single mothers, I loved this concept because it made me, as a single mother raising a son with a completely absent father, feel powerful (as I should, but as society tries to make me not feel).

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I previously read this in June 2016 and noted that it didn’t seem as revolutionary as I’d expected when there was such a buzz around it. However, re-reading it, I appreciate how matter-of-fact it is. It’s accessible so everyone can (and should) read it and understand it. As the author herself says, “My own definition if a feminist is a man or a woman who says, yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better. All of us, women and men, must do better.” That’s something we need to strive for now more than ever.

Dear Ijeawele; or, A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This one resonated with me a bit more than We Should All Be Feminists, perhaps because of the parenting aspect and how conscious I am now of what my son is exposed to and what he thinks is acceptable. Honestly, a lot of the advice struck me in a way that I really needed after being raised in the South and held to certain standards I was led to believe were “right.”

Some of my favorite quotes include:

"Everybody will have an opinion about what you should do, but what matters is what you want for yourself, and not what others want you to want."

"But here is a sad truth: Our world is full of men and women who do not like powerful women. [...] We judge powerful women more harshly than we judge powerful men." Oof, that one hits hard considering *gesturing around*. (The whole quote is amazing but it's a paragraph so I don't want to replicate it all here.)

"Teach her that if you criticize X in women but do not criticize X in men, then you do not have a problem with X, you have a problem with women."

"Teach her to reject likeability. Her job is not to make herself likeable, her job is to be her full self, a self that is honest and aware of the equal humanity of other people."

"Tell her that kindness matters. Praise her when she is kind to other people. But teach her that her kindness must never be taken for granted. Tell her that she, too, deserves the kindness of others."