Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Heather's Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Words/Topics That Will Make You NOT Pick Up A Book

Top Ten Tuesday is the creation of The Broke and the Bookish, each week they post a list and one of their writers answers.  This week's topic is Top Ten Words / Topics That Will Make You NOT Pick Up A Book, so click the jump to read my list.

There's not a lot I won't read and I genuinely mean that; I try to read outside of my comfort zone whenever I can.  So these are topics / words that make me hesitate to pick up a book.

01 Romance: I feel bad for saying this because I've read a few books that are romantic and okay, but for the most part when I see a book described as romance, it typically means the narrator will go on about love for the whole book instead of doing anything interesting.

02 Erotica: I could kinda put this in the same vein as #1, but I feel like I've read a few where it was just endless sex scenes and nothing else happening. There is good erotica out there, please don't get me wrong, but again I hesitate to pick up a book if I see that in the description.

03 Abuse: Not in the sense that I absolutely refuse to even acknowledge the subject, but in the sense that I feel like abuse is not treated with the gravity it should be a lot of times and that upsets me.

04 Mental Illness:  As someone suffering from one, I really hate to see people who also suffer from one demonized or romanticized based on whichever one fits the authors whimsy best.  It's something close to me, so I always try to make sure I agree with how it's handled before I read it.

05 Murder:  It's something that happens out in the real world (I was friends with a guy in high school who got shot in the chest), but in all honesty it makes me really uncomfortable.

06 Award winning:  I'm not to judge whether or not it deserves those awards, but when I see "In this [long list of awards] award winning novel", I feel like it's saying "read this, other people loved it enough to give it awards, so you should buy it and rub your face on it right now!"

07 Mysteries:  This is something I've recently been overcoming, and at the time of this post I'm actually reading two mysteries, but I usually envision them as some whodunit that's really tedious to wade through.  Like I said though, I have been getting better about it!

08 Reworkings:  I usually always wind up comparing the reimagining to the original work and griping about it.  Some of them are very good in their own right, I admit, but for the most part they aren't things I really like to read.

09 Short story collections:  I feel like only so much can be accomplished in a short story and some authors should stick to novels because they have big ideas that can't exactly fit in the confines of a short story.  Plus, I'm still kinda miffed I read Haruki Murakami's short story collections before I read all his books and later realized that a lot of ideas in those stories were reused in his books.  =[  I was not a happy camper!  Some authors can do it really well though, which is why this is low on my list and not really that much of a turn off for me.

10 Diary style:  Not actual diaries of authors / celebrities published in book form, but books written in diary format.  Usually I find them to be really unrealistic, especially if we're talking about the characters being people in the current world.  A lot of people don't speak in the formal way writers use and it completely takes me out of the reading experience.

24 comments:

  1. You know, I'm not really a fan of anthologies either. The only ones I've read, I only got because of one particular story that happened to be a novella for a series I was into. And, for the record, I hate it when authors do that.

    TTT @ Krista's Dust Jacket

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    1. I honestly wish authors who contributed to anthologies left an option to buy their story separately sometimes. I just hate spending so much money on a book when I only care about ONE story in it.

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  2. Your #6!! Reminds me that when I see "bestselling Author" I'll immediately become disinterested. Not because it's popular but because it seems every other author has that in their biography or synopses. I'm supposed to want to read the book because it's popular? No thank you

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    1. Exactly! It's not really necessary to push a book, imo. If I'm not interested from the synopsis, I won't really care that the book's won awards or the author sells like hotcakes. =/

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  3. I love short story collections! If I'm interested in a particular topic, but I don't have particularly much time at that moment, I find them perfect reads. Of course everyone is entitled to their own opinions. :)

    Interesting list in overall!

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    1. There are some that are really good, and I tend to look forward to ones by different authors because it gives you a sample of their works, but overall I'm just not too crazy about them.

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  4. Erotica is not my favourite either! Great list.

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    1. I've given it a try a few times and I feel it's just not something for me.

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  5. I typically love short story collections and short stories in general. I love that slice of life feeling I can get from a short story. I also use short stories as a way to decide whether I want more from a particular author.

    I'm not a huge fan of mystery novels. I've read a couple that I've liked and a bunch that I could barely finish.

    My Top Ten

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    1. I'm the same way about mysteries, they've always seemed so tedious to me. I'm trying to change my opinion on that though and find ones I like.

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  6. Brill list. I totally agree with you about reworkings!!

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    1. They seem to be coming out of the woodworks lately, don't they?

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  7. I like your list. I do not typically read books about mental illness, though there are a lot of popular YA books that glorify characters with obsessive behavior, OCD and the like. But there is a really awesome read by Elyn Saks, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness. She writes about her own story and she changed my view of those that live with this challenge. I would recommend it. Wow, that was a long comment.

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    1. Thanks for recommending it, I've added it to my to-read shelf! I've heard of it before, but now I've got to check it out.

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  8. i have mental illness on my TTT list too. and usually it runs into the realm of weird and i just can't. i agree with you about short stories. i hardly ever pick up anthology books. unless it's part of a longer series--you know, one of those #1.5 novellas in between series books i'm really invested in--then MAYBE i'll pick it up.

    my TTT.

    -michelle @ Michelle & Leslie's Book Picks

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    1. I'm really bad about needing to read everything in a series, so I usually pick up anthologies for that reason too. I saw on Jonathan L. Howard's twitter he was actually putting two short stories from out of print magazines on Kindle later in the year and breathed a sigh of relief. XD

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  9. I agree with your 1 & 2. I also agree with abuse and mental illness - I'm so angry when they don't give these topics adequate attention or they get it wrong.
    Thank you for stopping by on my blog earlier!

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    1. It's so upsetting to me when they're just treated character traits instead of what they actually are.

      Thank you for stopping by our blog as well!

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  10. I completely agree with the erotica! And I think you're absolutely right about the abuse and mental illness ones...these are really sensitive topics that should be adressed carefully!

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    1. I like that they come up in books sometimes because I believe it can lead to discussion, but at the same time a lot of the portrayals are so off and bad.

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  11. Short story collections aren't really my thing either. I like my books to contain only one story and one story only.
    Great list! :D

    My TTT

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    1. That's it exactly. Too many stories and I feel a bit burdened.

      Thanks for checking out our blog!

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  12. I so agree with your abuse and mental illness ones. Short story collections I like from time to time, but not as a steady diet. Thanks for stopping by my Top Ten list!

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    1. I'm the same, I can abide a few here and there, but I get burnt out on them so easily and I just want to go back to reading a full length novel with the idea.

      Thank you so much for checking out our blog!

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