Rants & Raves: Things In Books I'm Just Not That Jazzed About

This is a feature that appears sporadically on the blog, whenever I have a bookish issue I need to rant or rave about. Feel free to comment with your thoughts!

The other day I finished going through my Goodreads TBR list and paring it down. It had gotten to over 2200 books and I'd seen another blogger (I think Jamie from The Perpetual Page-turner, perhaps?) saying that they'd been weeding out books they're not likely to read from their list, so I figured I'd do the same. (I am now down to below 1850 books, so I am feeling good about it! Even though that is still a massive amount of books, lol.)

Anyway, during this process, I've noted certain elements or aspects of books that make me go, "Ehhhhh I'm probably NOT going to like that" so I've compiled some of them in this blog post. (Don't worry, there are others that make me go, "oh YES I'm keeping this on the list, how have I not read it already?!", and they'll be catalogued in another post!).

This was also inspired by Small Review's similar posts Give Me That Book! (which I happened to stumble across recently and got me thinking, 'I should do a post like that too...') and Talk to the Hand.

So without further ado, here are things in books that will make me raise an eyebrow and think twice about adding to my TBR list...

- Trolls. I just... they're gross? Usually? Sorry, troll fans. Maybe point me to a book where they aren't portrayed as ugly, hulking, clumsy beasts who like to gnaw on unsavoury things. (Same thing with zombies, really, unless they are portrayed in a very un-gross way. Also not a fan of demons or goblins. I get creeped out easily, okay? :P)

- Cheating. This one depends a lot on the situation and how it's written, but as a general rule, I am not a fan of characters cheating on their boyfriends/girlfriends/spouses/what-have-you (I don't condone cheating in real life, so I am not thrilled to read about it in my books. It will definitely lower most characters in my opinion.) Similarly, I'm also not big on characters who lead on two (or more) people at the same time.

- Circuses. Clowns kinda freak me out and seeing poor animals forced to do tricks is not my idea of a fun time. Circuses always seem like they have a great capacity to go really WRONG.

I genuinely don't get why anybody LIKES clowns.

- Talking animals. These are hit-and-miss for me, but here's a detailed post explaining it.

- Nasty, mean-spirited, backstabbing characters who have no redeeming qualities and do not learn their lesson. Wuthering Heights, I'm looking at you. Also, the Luxe series. And Vicious.

- Really "zany" characters who are just TOO out there, and make a point of being quirky because they want to prove how different and special and unique they are. Believe me, if there was a convention for all the quirky/zany/"unique" YA characters, they'd realize really fast how many of them there actually are. (The blogosphere seems to be divided on these sorts of characters — half of it appears to love them, the quirkier the better, and the other half... doesn't. I usually fall into that latter half, particularly with contemporary books where there are just one or two zany characters, while everybody else is "appallingly" ordinary.)

- Superpowers/superheroes. I was never into Superman/Spiderman/Batman/whatever-else-there-is growing up (either the comics or the movies), so this sort of premise just doesn't tend to appeal to me. I don't read books for non-stop action-y fight scenes, and I feel like that is what most of these books would be.

- Computer hackers and virtual realities. Start talking code and you will see my eyes glaze over. Geeky discussions of technology hurt my brain. I can't visualize what's going on and I get really bored.

What are some elements in books that will make you go "uh, nope, not reading THAT"? Are any of them on my list?

Stay tuned for the next post, where I talk about some things in books that get my hearty stamp of approval!