Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Turn-Offs




This is hosted at The Broke and the Bookish. This week, the topic is:

Top Ten Book Turn-Offs you Encounter While Reading 

1. Insta-love. This pops up in way too many stories these days. It's worse than no romance at all in a book. It's very difficult to care at all about the two characters' relationship when you feel like there's no plausibility to it at all.

2. Incorrect grammar/English. I have always been that annoying person who goes out of their way to correct other people's grammar. I don't mean to be so rigid about it, but it gets under my skin like nothing else. Seeing it in a book is worse - were the editors asleep or something?

3. Similarities bordering plagiarism. Not going to lie, this seems to happen most often with Twilight.

4. Repetition. Sometimes I feel like the author uses the same words over and over, and I wish the vocabulary was expanded a little. The same goes for plot devises - if the action plays out the same way every time, it ceases to be exciting.

5. Sugarcoating dark themes. This may sound kind of mean, but if an author is going to write about a difficult topic, then they shouldn't be afraid to let things get a little ugly. I realize you have to have boundaries with this in YA in particular, but at the same time, I hate it when this happens.

6. Flat characters. If I don't like the characters, I don't like the book. It's that simple. Most of the time I prefer first person, but in the hands of skilled writers, third works just fine.

7. Too much information at one time a.k.a. info-dumps. There's nothing wrong with creating a detailed fantasy world. In fact, that's awesome. But information should be learned over time, not all at once. It can give the reader a serious headache.

8. Rushed climaxes/endings. Don't you hate it when the novel spends a good chuck of time building tension for this awesome conclusion and it just falls flat in the end?

9. Endings that are left way too open. I'm all for leaving some things to the imagination - it fact, sometimes it's better that way. But I hate it when everything just suddenly cuts off and you're not exactly sure what happened to the characters. If I invest time to read the story, I want to know what happens. That's kind of the point.

10. Overly possessive/borderline abusive love interests. I have been seeing this waaaaay too much. I think Fifty Shades of Gray sparked some kind of yucky theme.

What are your reading turn-offs? 



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