Top Ten Tuesday #104

Hi everyone! I hope you’ve all had a good week, I’m back from France now and the work for my exams has truly begun. I had one today, which I think went okay (absolutely no idea) but I still have another one next week, so can’t relax just yet! Anyway, I’m back this week courtesy of the lovely ladies over at The Broke and The Bookish, with another Top Ten Tuesday. As last week we shared our bookish loves, this week, we’ll be sharing our bookish pet peeves, with our Top Ten Things That Will Make Us Instantly Not Want To Read A Book. I went way over last week and I’m sure this week will not change that, as I have a lot of bookish pet peeves. So here we go, the things I hate that will make me not want to read a book:

1. LOVE TRIANGLES-This trope should just burn in a fiery pit of hell, okay? They’re so overdone, they’re rarely ever done well, and neither relationship with either love interest is usually well developed. Authors can we please stick to one well developed romance rather than a love triangle? Or none at all. Cause you know, that is an option.
2. “Purple” Prose-I love pretty writing as much as the next book lover, but there’s pretty writing and then there’s this, where the writing is just so flowery that most of the time I don’t even understand what the author is trying to say. If it seems like a book is going to have this kind of writing, then it’s a pretty safe bet that I’ll be running away screaming.
3. Girl on girl hate-NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! Just all the no’s to this okay. Society pits girls against each other enough without having it happen in books as well. I want supportive female friendships damn it!
4. Erotica-Just no. It makes me uncomfortable, and it’s just not the kind of thing I want to be reading about.
5. Space-It’s just not really my thing? I’m not saying I’d never give it a shot, but in general I’m not really that keen on venturing into space whilst reading.
6. Hype-Funnily this one was on both lists! Yes, if all the bloggers of ever are talking about how great a book is, I am likely to check it out, but I am wary. I have been burned before.
7. Comparisons-This one just makes me groan! I get why publishers do the whole “like this massive book, try this one” but it’s usually just setting a book up for failure and even the books I have enjoyed that have been compared to other big series, the reasons I’ve enjoyed them are not because they were compared to that series, in fact usually I think the resemblance is hardly there, it’s because the book itself is just good. Let books stand on their own merits publishers and stop saying “look this is the next ……”. Chances are you will just disappoint book lovers with this.
8. Dialogue where the teens don’t sound like teenagers-I’m not saying you have to have your teenage character speaking in slang every two lines, but I hate it when authors have their teen characters speaking like someone twice their age.
9. Slow moving plot-I’m a plot driven reader, I need the plot to be fast, exciting and engaging. If it’s moving too slow or there’s just not much happening, I will get bored.
10. Shirtless guys on the cover-Just no. Totally an indicator that this book is not something that I want to be reading.
11. Religion-I’m not religious and whilst I don’t have any problem with religious characters and absolutely think that’s something that should be seen in books, I wouldn’t pick up a book where religion was the main theme.
12. Mid series cover changes-If I know a series has had a cover change mid series, I am unlikely to start it, even if it sounds interesting. It just bothers me when series books don’t look like they belong to the same series!
13. It’s on a list of books you must read before you die-Okay this sounds like a weird one but hear me out. For the most part, all these books are classics and we just don’t gel. I think I’ve read maybe one or two books from these kinds of lists, but YA is hardly ever on them, it’s always literary fiction and I’m just not keen. I’m a black sheep I guess, I don’t want people telling me which books I must read before I die. I want to decide that!
14. Romance-I don’t mind books having romance as a side plot, but if romance is the main theme of the book, chances are, I won’t be reading it.
15. If it’s by an author I haven’t liked before-I do tend to give authors second chances most of the time, but if I really hated one of their books, the chances of me trying another are pretty slim, unless it sounds totally fantastic (example, my aversion to John Green books after hating TFIOS).
16. Love at first sight-If a book’s blurb indicates that any kind of love at first sight crap is going to be going on, then I won’t be reading it. I’m sorry, I just don’t believe that love at first sight is a thing, so I don’t want to read about it.
17. If the author is a jerk-If a book’s author has said something or done something bad, then the chances of me reading their book is slim to none.
18. If the book has lots of infodumping-It’s just dull people! Show me, don’t tell me!
19. Boring covers-I’m a judger okay! If it’s boring on the outside, it’s an indicator it might be boring on the inside.
20. Overly long chapters/really short chapters-This bugs me. Too long chapters and my attention wavers, or I have to stop midway through. Too short and yes I can read faster, but it also feels like not enough detail is put in. Between 10-20 pages is decent, once it gets over 20, it’s too long.

That’s all I have this week! I know I went over, but I figured, I went over for last week’s list, I should for this week’s too. There’s probably more bookish turn offs for me that I haven’t even thought of! Do any of these things turn you away from a book? What are your biggest bookish pet peeves? Let me know in the comments!

Next week’s topic is a cover themed freebie, not entirely sure what I’m going to do for that, but I guess you’ll find out next week! In the meantime, I will finally be getting you an April discussion post, I promise it will be up by the end of the month!