Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Every week, Jana assigns a topic and creates a post for everyone to link to.

This week’s topic is: Things That Make Me Instantly NOT Want to Read a Book. This is essentially the opposite of last week’s topic.

The Author

Just like authors that I automatically want to read, there are other authors that I automatically do not want to read, either through trying their books before or because the author themselves is problematic.

Horror

While I am open to a lot of different genres, I am not a fan of horror (this holds for movies too). I’ll read the occasional suspenseful thriller, but if it’s got blood, guts & gore; I’m probably going to pass

Vampires

I’ve never been a fan of vampires and skipped the whole vampire movement that happened a while back. While there are a few stories with vampires as characters that I do enjoy, I’m going to skip a book that focuses on vampires.

Preachy Religious Fiction

I like to explore other cultures and don’t mind if there is a religious theme, but when it’s done in a way that implies there is only one way to believe or is very “preachy,” then it is not a book for me.

Racist or Homophobic Storyline

I think this is pretty self-explanatory

Snakes on Covers

I have made a few exceptions on this one, but as someone who has an extreme phobia of all reptiles, especially snakes, I tend to shy from covers that feature them.

Poorly Developed Characters

I am all about the characters, and if the characters are flat, that’s a quick way for a book to end up in the DNF pile. If I find an author consistently writes poorly developed characters, they hit the “do not buy” list.

Misogyny

About 85% of what I read is romance, so I don’t run into this too often, but there are some Sci-Fi and Fantasy authors whose writing comes across as misogynistic. I avoid these.

Modern War

There is enough violence going on in the world, I don’t need to read fictionalized versions of war as well. That being said, I do enjoy some books set during WWII.

Long-Winded Epics

I have nothing against long books, as long as there is a reason for their length! If there is action moving the story along, it’s all good, but when it becomes a long series of descriptions or narration with no real movement, I start to fall asleep.