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 Bookish Things We Want To Quit/Have Quit

Paein

1 Love Triangles

I can’t stand these. They’re so unrealistic and they’re everywhere. They ruin the plots of stories because they BECOME the plot and things don’t happen because the girl is too busy being unrealistically indecisive between two love interests. I can’t say that I’ve given them up fully because sometimes I’ll risk one if the plot is right, but I have put a lot of books back on the shelf because there has been a triangle. Generally, if I accidentally find a love triangle in a book, I either ignore it, or I’m usually behind guy #1 – he’s usually the interesting new guy type that she wouldn’t have fallen in love with in the first place if she ACTUALLY loved guy #2. Listen to Johnny Depp on this – If you love two people, go with the second because if you loved the first enough you wouldn’t have fallen in love with the second.

2 Bad Writing/Plots I don’t like

It took me a while to realise; I can put these books down! Sometimes I’ll still flick through them and this isn’t always bad because sometimes a book isn’t as bad as I think, so I haven’t quite quit this one either but I’m working on it. I try to listen to my instincts on this and when it says “NO.” I put it down. I do hate this though, I always feel I’m missing out. If I’m exclaiming out loud about how bad something is, or complaining to someone, this is another indicator I need to stop reading and I try to give it between 20 and 30% to grab me before it goes away. I don’t tend to review books I don’t finish unless it’s to warn people or I reached 70% or something.

3 Peeking at the end

I’m sorry, I do this a lot….but sometimes, just sometimes, when you’ve invested a lot in a situation/character/ship you need to know it’s going to be all right before you invest any more into it. And sometimes! Sometimes knowing the ending is good, you can brace yourself! But usually it messes everything up so you really shouldn’t peek at the end…

4 Collecting a series before reading the first book

I’m getting better. I promise! But I don’t quite have this one down. I don’t like to read the start of a series unless I have the end in case it’s so spectacular I have to drop and grab ( drop the book you’ve just finished and go right into the next). The problem is when you don’t like the end of book 1 if you even get that far…But I’ve been getting used to reviewing books before starting the next one what with the blog, so I’m attempting to wait till I’ve reached the end first. Sometimes I will wait till the whole series is published before starting book 1, just to be on the safe side.

5 Buying more books than I can read.

This one right here is the reason why I’ve got the read it or loose it challenge I’m currently failing on and why I’ve got rid of books I haven’t read – I’m not interested in reading them anymore and so there’s no point keeping them but I wanted to read them once. My own to read shelf on goodreads holds nearly 1100 books! And I haven’t stopped. I’ve recently acquired 7 kindle books – my excuse being I was using up coupons before they expire because I don’t know how many I have or how long I have to use them. I also keep requesting books on Netgalley despite having 10 to currently review. I’ve tried implementing restrictions on myself but it hasn’t worked so far. No restrictions this year and I’ve probably bought less books than in past years, but I’m still buying more than I read. (it also helps to not scout out books, because I can’t choose – I just buy them all.) This is the one I need to quit most, but the problem is the new books are just too exciting.

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Ms4Tune

6 Forgetting to Return to a Series

I have a ridiculous number of series that I’ve started but never actually got round to finishing. I’m hoping to join Paein next year on a series blitz. There are so many characters that I loved but just left in perilous situations!

7 Not DNFing

I find it very hard to not finish a book once I’ve started it and because of this I’ve forced myself through sooo many books that I just didn’t enjoy! It stops me from reading something that I really want to read because it takes me ages to get through them. I’m going to have to start learning to judge when a book is just not worth pushing through.

8 Reading The Same Thing Over And Over

This year especially has been a very YA fantasy heavy year. I need more variety in my life as I’m starting to find its become predictable and samey. I hate it when this happens. I need to quit picking the same thing and read more genres and a mix of YA and adult fiction.

9 Reading Series Novellas

I don’t know why I do it to myself! I read a series and end up buying all the novellas to go with it… and they are usually a chapter from the novel, but from a different POV. It’s just a waste of my money and my reading time! I can only think of two times where reading these novellas has paid off and that’s Night of Cake and Puppets by Laini Taylor (because she is awesome and it was a short that complimented the series, not about the series) and The Novellas that prequelled Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas (which were awesome). Possibly I will just have to read the blurbs before purchasing them… or only read them if I completely loved the series.

10 Complaining about Film adaptations

This one is from the Husband… He wants me to stop ruining the films adapted from books because apparently I sit there comparing and complaining. He doesn’t care if the book was better or that that actor is completely wrong for that role, he just wants to watch the film.