Top Ten Tuesday: Things that Make Me Instantly NOT Want to Read a Book

"Top Ten Tuesday" is a weekly bookish shareable, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl!

So, here's the thing: usually I like to start my "Top Ten Tuesday" posts with some kind of prefacing, before we hit the theme. General remarks about how my life is going, what I've been up to, usually why I haven't been reading all that much, the whole shebang. But there's a bit of a problem with that this week... because I also usually write the rest of the post before I write the introduction, similar to how I used to write the body of my papers before I tackled the introductory paragraph (which, if you know how to do this properly, totally streamlines the difficulty of actually getting started writing your paper). 

Which is why I can tell you right now, that this blog post is somewhat inordinately long. 

What can I say? I've got a lot to say. You already saw it at work last week, when the "TTT" theme was a mirrored version of this one: ask me what makes me immediately want to pick up a book, and I'll write about 2K words about it. Ask me about what makes me NOT want to pick up a book? Well... maybe I'll write a little more. 

Maybe I'll write a LOT more. 

And before you get started making your way down the list, let it be known that I'm making a personal judgement call here: I originally tried to draft this blogpost by tackling hard subjects like "Undisclosed Sexual Assault," "Uninformed Interactions with Racist Language," and "Pretty Much Anything from Anyone Involved in Politics as a General Profession But Political Celebrities in Particular," because each of those are, 100%, things that will virtually guarantee I do not even touch, let alone purposefully read, that book. However, in trying to detail my thoughts and feelings, it started making me so angry and upset that I was paragraphs and paragraphs in before I realized that this wasn't a blogpost I even wanted to be writing, let alone would would ever even want to read as a fellow reader. 

So I refined my scope and tried to keep things closer to target for things that were specific, funny or interesting, or at a minimum, less absolutely dire. In the words of Marge Simpson, "Kids, could you lighten up a little?" 

Warning: The Sass Factor was not lost in the rewrites though. I'm still propelled by that feeling of righteous fury, it's just lodging itself into different targets, some of which you might not agree with.

Just my opinions, though. Careful: they're a little... wordy. 

1. Multiple Points of View in the Narrative

Starting out with a bang here! I asked my brother for help writing this list, and boy, did he deliver: "You always complain about Multi-POVs." You sure bet I do!

Mutli-POVs are annoying for those who prefer linear plot, confusing for those who are easily distracted, and are especially agonizing for those of us who have to pick up and put their book down multiple times a day during short breaks. Depending on the size of the cast of characters who form our viewpoint into the world, it might be eons before I swing back to the same person again, and by that point, I will most likely have lost the grip on who they are, what they're doing, and where we were last time I checked in. 

From a slightly more critical perspective, it can also come across as a cheap and easy way to build suspense, especially when your chapters end on Nancy-Drew-style cliffhangers. By chopping up perspectives into fragmented pieces, you're forcing your audience to keep reading to gain understanding, and when it comes in such truncated morsels being switched around like a shuffled deck of cards, your readers run the risk of losing the plot, and it can be hard to jump back in as seamlessly. 

I've straight up thought about reading a book all the way through, one POV at a time, rather than just keep swimming through. That's how much this particular style drives me nuts. 

(That all being said, I do love some Leigh Bardugo. I'll brave it - and more - for her.) 

2. Overly Numbers-Focused or Specific-Detailed Nonfiction

I'm not saying I've ever been diagnosed with dyscalculia, but I'm also not saying that anyone has ever tried. 

I'm all about backing up your information with clear and discernable proof, but at the same time, you could be just putting whatever numbers you wanted in there and I would literally never be able to tell the difference. I don't necessarily want the specifics unless they're in clearly communicated percentages, and even then, feel free to round up to the nearest ten or something. I believe that you know how to interpret data better than I do; just skip to the good stuff and let's get on with it! 

Furthermore, I feel similarly about incredibly detailed lists of names, for both people and places. I'm willing to bet the scholars go crazy for information overload like this, but I am not a scholar, I am just a girl who is considering whether to adjust her position lying down on the sofa because reading like this for too long is making all the blood lazily wander towards my elbows, and now my fingers are numb. 

I do not need to know the specifics, I'm just here for a good time. 

3. Horny Fantasy Fae, in General, but Sarah J. Maas in Particular

Doesn't the whole thing just remind you of the Paranormal tidal wave - of moody black covers, and models with bang-covered faces and mysterious tattoos, and backless ruffled dresses - that overtook the YA shelves of Borders back in, like, 2008? Only now, we're tackling iteration after iteration of thorn-entwined titles, ambiguously described monarchy systems, and all too many discussions about wingspans and tails. 

What remains are the broody, tattooed and angsty poster people. And, as always, descriptions of piercing eyes, be they green or blue (or, occasionally, purple). 

The thing that stings the most is that I was absolutely a fan of Maas, back in the original run of her popularity... approximately ten years ago. For people in the know back when the book blogosphere was a happening place - back when I was too busy resenting the medium shift that was already turning towards YouTube, let alone ever thinking everyone would someday take up future residence on TikTok less than a decade later - I got into a little series called Throne of Glass, the first book of which was published the summer I graduated high school. Have you heard of it? (More importantly, were you one of the people who read all of the novellas when they were still only offered on ebook, long before Assassin's Blade was released?) I only stuck with it through Heir of Fire, but remained interested in Maas' work. 

A Court of Thorns and Roses was published all the way back in the Spring of 2015, and when a friend in the English major asked me "You like Beauty and the Beast retellings, right?" I was ecstatic to borrow her copy. I ended up sticking with the series all the way through A Court of Frost and Starlight, which came out only three short years later, in 2018, before I decided I had had enough, and bailed. Despite the fact that I started reading traditional genre Romance-with-a-capital-R that same year, I really didn't love where I saw Maas' series headed, and had started to get bugged by some of the quirks of her writing style that were only thrown into sharper relief the more I read on. 

Lo and behold, about five years later, I've been tempted to start a drinking game for every time a well-meaning, usually younger friend asks me, "Oh, you like to read, right? Have your heard of ACOTAR?" And while I still absolutely respect the various faeries and their tails of my youth - Hi, Holly Black, I will always love you - I definitely don't pick up that many of those kinds of books anymore. 

4. Men Who Write Under Deliberately Gender-Ambiguous Pen Names So That You Think That Their Women-Centered Novels Were Written By Women, Because Capitalism Works Better That Way

(Important Note: neither transphobia nor prejudice against nonbinary individuals have anything to do with what I'm talking about here. What I'm telling you is that Riley Sager Thrillers - which unilaterally feature female main characters in danger, occasionally placed into gender-specific peril - are written by a man who identifies as a man and writes under male names like Alan and Todd, except when he wants to publish as Riley. I'm talking specifically about Men Writing In the Hopes That You'll Think They're Women In Order to Sell More Copies of Books Where Women Are Usually In Danger, because they know they are writing books that center female main characters, which are primarily marketed towards female readers. Trans and nonbinary authors, on the other hand, are rad as hell.) 

Some of you may be balking at this point, saying "That's not a real thing." Or maybe you're rejecting this based on the principle that it's a double standard, because women have done this for centuries: after all, George Eliot was a woman, the Brontes (Charlotte, Emily, Anne) originally had to publish as the Bells (Currer, Ellis, Acton) to get any kind of eyes on their work, and even Victoria Schwab chose to publish Fantasy under V. E. Schwab, rather than have a more recognizably-female name leading the way in a male-dominated genre.

And some of you, for the first time, are realizing right now that Riley Sager is actually a guy. 

(He's also far from the only one doing this in contemporary Thriller publishing, as was covered fairly extensively in 2017, in The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, in MEL Magazine, and by the Guardian. Some great, more conversational coverage was provided by some of the ladies at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, for an individualized perspective these writeups don't cover.)  

And for the record, yes, I absolutely hated, HATED Final Girls, in part specifically because I hated how the female main character was written, long before I found out she was written by a guy. 

5. Romances When There Are Babies and Kids Involved 

For the love of all that is produced in mass market paperback and has a shirtless man on the cover, I don't want to ever read another Romance novel where kids are involved. There's just too much that can - and depending on the care of your author, will - go sideways. 

For instance, I hate the "surprise baby" trope in all iterations. I also hate the "miracle baby" plot resolution technique. I have heard of, but have thankfully never encountered, the "accidental pregnancy" trope, thank GOD, because I honestly don't think my anxiety can handle it.

I hate the "precocious daughter" who encourages her dad to ask out her pretty music (or dance, or art) teacher, and I hate the "angry teenage son" who the boyfriend has to win over in order to really get with the mom. I hate children who talk like adults, and children who demonstrate abilities and understanding far beyond (or below!) appropriate growth benchmarks for the sake of adding some kind of dimension or humor to lackluster dialogue, and I especially hate when they are used as a tool to push an unnecessary narrative choice on behalf of their parent, only to never be brought up again. 

Do people have kids? Absolutely. Do people with kids deserve romance too? Hell yeah! But then let's have plots where those kids actually act like actual kids, whose lives are actually tied to their actual parents, and don't exist solely to railroad a particular plot direction or generate otherwise bonkers stakes for the couple to be together, or even just establish sympathy for a character (because let's be real, the guy might have a daughter, but that in no way precludes him from being a total jerk). 

I blame my loathing of this entire thing on Hallmark Channel Original Christmas movies. 

6. Escapist-Genre Authors Who Don't Take Their World-Building "Hard Topics" Seriously

Maybe I'm just voicing gripes about world issues here, but I've had a couple of books in the past few years who have really lost points in my eyes, because they couldn't get an appropriate handle on the important subject matter their main characters were engaging with.

If your Science Fiction interacts with the after-effects of warfare that ravages a civilization and displaces a wave of refugees... if your Fantasy involves an enslaved race of peoples subjugated under a tyrannical rule that perpetuates in their daily interactions within social classes... if your Romance deals with severe misogyny or god forbid, some form of sexual violence, I'm going to need you to step the hell up and engage with that kind of plot content seriously. Put your big kid boots on, and get to marching: do the hard work, do right by your characters, and do right by the world you live in. 

If all you can offer up is a general "gosh, I feel bad about that" sympathy shrug from your main characters - oftentimes only to set up the idea that they're the 'good guys' - without any form of meaningful interaction or demonstratable change, or for heaven's sake, if you're just trying to instill it as a kind of backstory quirk to make this character notable or interesting, then why the hell are you putting such content there in the first place?

Maybe just don't trifle around with real life hard issues... if you don't actually care about them? 

7. Straight-White-Male-Dominated Fantasy Worlds (Like, Your World Has Dragons In It, But God Forbid Two Women Talk To Each Other)

It is a major point of difference in the reading decisions of my brother and I, that I do not enjoy the Lord of the Rings novels. I tried it - spent over a month of my freshman year of college attempting to trudge through Fellowship of the Ring, and eventually emerged on the other side so burnt out that I didn't read anything else for about two weeks after I finished it - and I did not like it. 

(As I glibly remarked to my brother recently, in regards to the movies, if I wanted to hear about a bunch of white dudes backpacking through New Zealand, I would have stayed in touch with more of the fraternity guys I knew in college after graduation.)

If I'm actually going to sit down and dedicate my time towards reading a High Fantasy, there had better be at least three or four female (or gender-non-conforming) characters named within the first forty to fifty pages. Not even main characters, just... people! And they've got to be actual people, with motivations and voices and a variety of ethnic backgrounds. I don't care how many Zs or Xs or inappropriately distributed apostrophes their names have; what I do care about is if anyone in your main cast is same-sex-oriented. 

If you can conceive of a Fantasy world, with its own geography and language and cultures and foods, and you're still coming out on the other side with nearly everyone in the entire novel just being a straight white dude whose only distinction is in what weapon they carry and what facial hair they grow, then I don't know what to tell you. 

Maybe just that the world is an exciting place to live in, and you should go meet more real life people before you try writing any more fictional ones? 

8. The Phrase "Whatever God Looks Like to You," or Plenty of Other Couched Religious Thoughts Like It, in Self Help

To defend myself a little here, I was raised Catholic. I read Catholic- and Christian-oriented books with some degree of regularity. But the thing about Catholicism is that... it's not exactly known for being subtle. Chances are, beyond the Spanish Inquisition, you're going to see Catholicism coming from a mile away. 

I don't know what it is about the Self Help genre, but there are an awful lot of religious folks in here. And in particular, there are a lot of Christians who want to couch their religious convictions behind a thin veil of pseudo-secularism. 

It drives me absolutely nuts to see Christian values nestled inside a Self-Help book with the idea that

it's somehow able to be parsed out in your own individualized direction with a flippant note from the author. It's relying too much on the reader to somehow adjust their own perspectives and experience, rather than have the author deconstruct how their own beliefs inform their insights in the first place. 

Notably, the book I have on display here - At Your Best, by Casey Nieuwhof - is an example of the appropriate way to do this within the Self Help sphere: he's literally a pastor, on top of being a motivational speaker and author, and not only does he immediately clarify the role religion plays in his life from the introductory material, but almost no doctrine actually comes up when discussing the Self Help principles he recommends, only in how making these kinds of lifestyle changes affected his own work schedule. Be like Casey. 

9. Fantasy Words That Are Just Straight-Up Corollaries for Previously Existing Countries and Cultures

(Okay, to be very clear, I'm not coming for Leigh Bardugo again. I love her! But again, this is absolutely something she does in her world-building. To the point: recently, I was reading about the war in Ukraine, and stumbled upon a reference to the Russian city of Novosibirsk. I spent about ten minutes puzzling over why that name sounded so familiar, until I realized that Novokribirsk is one of the Ravkan cities adjacent to the Shadow Fold in the Grishaverse.)

I think it's more of a factor in Middle Grade and Young Adult Fantasy - or, like with some movies and television shows, and a whole lot of video games, more of a wider-spanning media phenomenon - but if your only contributions to building out an entirely new world are to muddle up the names a little bit, and just adopt, wholesale, entire cultural touchstones of that particular country without identifying it specifically, then I don't know if you're doing your world a service in its construction. Nor really the people of that real-world country. 

I acknowledge that this is occasionally very intentional (for instance, The Hunger Games deliberately takes place in a post-apocalyptic America, and as such, the Districts operate as recognizable parts of the United States). I just also think this is occasionally very lazy. And occasionally, kinda problematic. 

For more info why, check out this incredibly detailed TV Tropes page on "Fantasy Counterpart Culture."

10. Just Not Really Being All That Interested In Reading It... At Least, Not Right Now. 

This is, by far, my reading habit that most drives my brother up the wall. I am - notoriously, historically, frustratingly - a mood reader, first and foremost. And it can absolutely tank my enjoyment when I try to read something I'm just really not feeling in that moment. 

For instance, I first read Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver when Washington was in the middle of a stretch of snowy days. It was absolutely perfect... because I was in the right mindset to read something wintry and cozy! On the other side, I've had Katherine Arden's The Bear and the Nightingale waiting on my TBR for a while now, sitting around for the right kind of weather forecast, no matter how often my friends have told me to just tackle it on the sooner side. 

Additionally, I am almost never, ever in the mood to read Horror... but one of the few times I do, is during the Summer, when the days are long and I have far less reason to be as afraid of what goes bump in the night as I am during the Winter, when the dark is near inescapable. That's why some of the rare times you'll see me picking up something like Stephen King is in July or August! (And certainly never on a camping trip.) 

It all comes down to how I'm feeling about it. And, you know, the stars. 

What's in YOUR Top Ten? Have any similar vibes to my list? Let me know, in the comments below!