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Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Things That Will Make Us Instantly NOT Want To Read A Book

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish that other bloggers are welcome to join in, to create Top Ten lists on varying topics. This week it’s Top Ten Things That Will Make Us Instantly NOT Want To Read A Book

Paein

1 Love Triangles

The YA section of anywhere is littered with these and they’re really not that common. “Life and death, the world in the balance and a girl has to choose between two boys!” What?!?! No. You love your best friend yes, but you aren’t IN love with him. If you had been would you really have fallen in love with the ‘mysterious new guy’?! I’m unlikely to pick books with love triangles in up now. It’s so over used now and it’s rare that it’s done well.
Having said that, The Wrath and the Dawn did it well and I love that Duology.

2 Stupidly embarrassing situations

Second hand embarrassment is a thing. I don’t deal well with that…and sometimes characters end up knee deep in embarrassment and they just keep making it worse! This is often a key contemporary novel trope and is largely why I avoid the genre so much. I mean really, you don’t put on your too-tight lucky-underwear when you’re FLYING off to a job interview. The flying is obviously going to make it worse…

3 Miscommunication as a plot device

Ooh fancy words! But honestly, no. I hate this. I know I’m not any good at expressing myself, but I’m pretty sure I’d ask for clarification before going off and starting a war or something because Bob said whatever. Actually I’m getting better at saying I don’t understand so I’m almost confident I’d ask…
I’m also getting better at putting down books I don’t like. This is one of the things that will make me do that!
Ok people misunderstand each other all the time, but if an entire book could have not happened if Thingy had added a smiley face to the text they sent to Whatsit then no thank you.

4 Negative Feminine Connotations

I didn’t know how to name this, but basically kick arse girls being anti dresses and ‘girly’ things. Or girls not being friends with other girls because of ‘drama’ etc (boys are generally far more dramatic). This doesn’t make anything better, it’s still very anti-girl. What’s wrong with being able to take down foes with ease while enjoying makeup and pink? Tamora Pierce got it right with Alanna who was a fantastic Knight who later enjoyed also being a Lady. Buffy was pretty damn good at it too come to think of it….

5 Unrealistic Decisions / Situations

I would class myself as a highly logical person and I can often see both sides in an argument. So if something happens that just doesn’t fit, it drives me up the wall.
A character doing something against their personality.
A character fighting for something and then…not following through.
Or character 2 going completely off the deep end when character 1 did something highly logical!!!
Ok it wasn’t a good thing at all, but they were missing one MASSIVE piece of information. And without that information they had a valid point. (Man that was a hard one to try and put into words without letting anything out of the bag…)
I understand that people change and that things change them, if there is a progression or even a reasonable explanation I’m ok with it, but generally people follow a pattern, psychologically speaking and I can’t be wasting my time with books that break these ‘rules’.

Ms4Tune

6 Long Drawn Out Storylines

When I’m reading reviews and someone mentions that nothing seemed to happen for the first half of the book… that’s an instant turn off. I hate long winded storylines. JUST GET ON WITH IT ALREADY!

7 Swearing/ Vulgarity

I don’t know why but if I pick up a book and the character is swearing lots for no particular reason or they talk about other people in a really vulgar way I instantly put that book down. I don’t consider myself prissy or prudish in anyway but I don’t see why, if I wouldn’t put up with it in real life, I should put up with it in a book. I’m thinking specifically of you, YOU by Caroline Kepnes…

8 Goodreads Rating

If a book has a rating below 3.5 on Goodreads, it will either have to have had a great price tag or an intriguing blurb to get me to grab it. There is a few reviews that will swing it one way or the other for me… I trust their judgement because I’ve found their taste very similar to mine in the past.

9 Purple Prose

When an author decides that a paragraph is better than a couple of words I don’t see purple I see red. Its irritating, unnecessary and makes me feel like they don’t know where they want the story to go so have tried to pad it out.

10 Too Many Over Excited Reviews

In a similar way to a bad goodreads rating, too many amazing reviews can also frighten me away. I get scared that I won’t see what everyone else does so I avoid it. I hate being disappointed…

pam id pics paein pam id pics and pam id pics ms4tune

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3 comments on “Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Things That Will Make Us Instantly NOT Want To Read A Book

  1. Annemieke

    Oh long drawn out plots are the worst. All those side tours just make me roll my eyes. As much as I love Riordan, he has a way of doing that.

  2. Eve L (Evilous)

    I see love triangles in many of lists this week. I also never thought about it but yeah second hand embarrassment is legit, how did I never put it together I don’t know though I don’t mind this myself I totally see it. I also agree some story lines would have been better if condensed and seemed a bit too drawn out.

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