Top Ten Tuesday #205

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week since I last did one these, I’ve been putting the finishing touches on my project, collecting it all together and formatting and all that boring stuff, but by Friday, it will be handed in and 3 months of hard work will be finally be over, in fact my entire Uni course will be over which is a strange thing to think about!

Anyway, since it’s Tuesday, I’m back with another Top Ten Tuesday, courtesy of Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week we’re talking Things That Make Us Pick Up A Book, and we did kind of a similar topic when TTT was still with The Broke and The Bookish last year, however for that I mostly did what content would make me want to pick up a book, so I’m going to try and mainly focus on external factors today, to make this post a little different. So here we go things that will make me pick up a book:

1. It’s by a favourite author

I do like discovering new authors, if I didn’t then I wouldn’t have any of my favourite authors, since they were all new to me once! But once an author has become my favourite, it’s likely I’ll keep returning to their work again and again, because it’s very comforting to read a tried and trusted author and can often help me get out of a reading slump. So safe to say, if a book is by VE Schwab, Samantha Shannon, Rick Riordan, Jodi Picoult, Sarah J Maas, Leigh Bardugo, Neal Shusterman or Derek Landy, I will be reading it.

2. The cover is nice

Yes I know, I know “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” but all bookworms know that saying is utter garbage and that everyone judges books by their covers. If it has a pretty cover, then nine times out of ten, I will want to pick it up to see what it’s about. That doesn’t mean I’ll read it, I do still check the blurb to see if I’m interested, but I’ll be far more likely to be drawn to it in the first place.

3. Bloggers are recommending it

More and more now, especially with new books, I’ll check them out because I’ve seen a lot of buzz about them on Twitter, or on other people’s blogs. In fact I generally worry now if I haven’t seen much about a book anywhere, which I know is bad and I’m probably missing out on some hidden gems, but I feel a lot more confident going into a book when I know that bloggers I trust have liked it.

4. There is magic in it

I am and always will be a massive fantasy lover, so the first hint of magic in a book and I will be all over it. It’s not that I don’t like contemporaries, there are plenty that I have loved, but I just think that everything is better with a little bit of magic!

5. It’s part of a Buy One Get One Half Price offer

I get a lot of books from Waterstones and they always have this particular offer, so if there’s a book I want to read that’s included in the offer, I’ll often try to find something else as well so that I can make the deal.

6. It’s part of a series that I love

Naturally if I’ve read book one in a series and loved it, I will be picking up the next books in the series when they come out.

7. Humour

I love books that make me laugh, if your book is promising humourous dialogue, then 9/10, I will read it and love it because humour is one of my favourite things. Honestly I actually wish there were more books out there that made me laugh? Oftentimes it seems like YA is trending towards the more serious side of things, which fair enough, but you can have dark books and still inject some humour in there (case in point, Neal Shusterman’s Unwind series, they’re dark as hell, but also darn funny!).

8. Strong focus on friendship

I love books where friendship is celebrated and loved, just as much, if not more than the romance in a book. All of my favourite books have some form of strong friendship in them and they probably always will, for me, I find the friendship dynamics even more interesting than romantic ones.

9. The film/TV show was good

Okay don’t all shudder at once, but yes, sometimes I watch a film based on a book without having read the book first. Obviously I do prefer to go see book/film adaptations where I have already read the book first, but that’s not always possible and sometimes I see the film first. This does work in my favour sometimes though, as I’ll try books I might not have gone for previously, I never would have read Perks of Being A Wallflower if I hadn’t seen the film, I wouldn’t be considering reading either Game of Thrones, or You if I hadn’t seen the TV shows. So sometimes, a film or TV show can introduce you to a new book.

10. The book is historical/has historical elements

I’m a history student, so naturally any kind of historical fiction is a big draw for me, though I have to admit, I’d love it if YA authors were a bit more creative with their historical settings, as I’ve read an awful lot of WWII fiction and not much else! I also love fantasy books in historical settings, I’ve read a few of those and they’re brilliant, I’m so glad they seem to be on the rise right now.

So there we go, Things That Make Me Pick Up A Book. Do you agree with any of these? What things make you want to pick up a book? Let me know in the comments!

Next week’s topic is Outrageous Things I’ve Done For The Love of Books, but honestly I can really only think of about three things I’ve done that would come under this category, so I think I’m going to pull a topic from The Broke and The Bookish archives, and talk about my Top Ten Best/Worst Series Endings (I have A LOT of thoughts). Meanwhile, I’m going to have a review of my latest read, Descendant of The Crane up at some point this week, it will probably be over the weekend, after I’m done with all of my project work, but keep an eye out. I’m also going to have a really exciting post, a Q&A with author C.G. Drews, better known to most of you as PaperFury up over the weekend as well, so definitely keep a look out for that one as well.