Top 10 Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, though originally it was created by The Broke and the Bookish. This week the topic is unpopular bookish opinions, which means I get the chance to be salty. Yay!
1. Paperbacks are better than hardbacks
Dust jackets are ANNOYING and hardbacks are heavy. Yes, they look pretty, but paperbacks are a lot more versatile. I’m not saying I hate hardbacks, but in most cases, I will choose and even wait for the paperback.
2. I don’t like all my books to look pristine
Sure, I don’t intentionally mangle them. I don’t deliberately crack spines. I take care of my books, but they’re books. They’re meant to be read. Pages are going to get smudged, spines creased, covers bent. Also, I love buying used books. I like my shelves to be a mixture of old and new.
3. I actually prefer big books to shorter ones
This obviously depends. I don’t like books that are unnecessarily verbose or just full of meaningless filler. However, big, long, complex stories? YES PLEASE. I also like how they look on a shelf more. I don’t like how multiple short books look one next to the other. Short books interspersed with long ones is the best aesthetic.
4. I will often avoid a book when it gets sold to me as ‘diverse’
I’ve talked about this before. It’s not that I have a problem with diverse books. On the contrary. I have a problem with the forced diversity we see most of the time. If you have to resort to “Well, yeah but there’s a same gender romance in my book” or “The main character is a transgender male, in love with his best male friend and has a disability” to sell it, then I’m not interested. Unless of course, you’re writing a book specifically about that and the story is about said disability or romance or whatever. But there are so many generic fantasies out there that I’m supposed to love just because the MC is diverse. No thanks.
5. Angsty romances are overrated
There’s enough of that to go around in real life, don’t need to read about it too.
6. I will often avoid new debuts
Especially if they’re YA.This is because I’ve come across so many mediocre debut novels I’m fed up. Stop publishing meh books and hyping them to the heavens. I realise that I might be missing out on some truly great debuts out there, but you know what, if they’re good, they’ll still be around in a year or two and I can read them then.
7. Conemporaries are boring more often than not
8. I like Bible pages
9. I prefer third person narration to first person
10. I generally don’t like american audiobook narrators
There are some exceptions, but for the most part, I don’t like them.
A Book Nerd 
Interesting list.
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Thank you
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I prefer paperbacks, too.
My TTT.
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Thank you!! I wanted to say something along the same lines about forced diversity, but struggled with how to phrase it. I’m all for diverse books, but having a diverse character alone is not enough of a reason to like a book. I also don’t think every single story needs to get hung up on trying to throw in diversity just for it’s own sake.
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Exactly! And it’s so obvious that people do it just because it’s “the thing” nowadays rather than because they’re passionate about it. If it’s not organic, then just leave it. Tell your story.
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I especially see the commentary when it comes to fantasy books. People always complain that of all the worlds that the author could have imagined, they happened to make one that was still heteronormative, patriarchal, etc. Which is mostly true, but at the same time, if that is what fits for that particular story, I think that’s fine as long as there are also a range of other more diverse books out there to balance it out. I don’t think every book needs to get hung up on diversity within itself, as long as there is a diverse range in general, if that makes sense.
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Yeah, but if you want to have diversity in your book. Great. That’s fantastic, but that doesn’t mean you can get away with writing a substandard book. Or at least it shouldn’t. Unfortunately it does happen.
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Absolutely. Diversity alone is not enough to make a bad book better, at least not to me. It might give it a slight boost in terms of a final rating if the diversity is at least done well, but if the story or writing are generally bad, I’m still not going to like the book.
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Love this list. Can I ask, which nationality audiobook narrators do you prefer? I like American and UK (but I haven’t heard many others that I’m aware of).
My TTT: https://youngatheartreader.blog/2019/06/11/top-ten-tuesday-unpopular-bookish-opinions/
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I prefer UK narrators. Because the books I listen to are English, they do tend to be English speaking narrators, though I have heard a few who were at least ethnically of different nationalities. It just comes down to accents. I’m not usually bothered by American accents in films or other media or even face to face, but for some reason in Audio books, they just grate on my nerves.
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I wholeheartedly agree with your point about forced diversity. Its hard to talk about it without someone being all “OMG YOU’RE A BIGOT” or whatever. But if the writing is crappy, having diverse characters, in and of itself, doesn’t make it a good book. Same with movies/TV.
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I’m glad to see there are other people thinking like this. I’ve gotten entirely positive responses to that particular opinion whenever I’ve voiced it. Hopefully more and more people will come to see things this way and we will eventually shift the industry away from this whole “if it’s diverse, nothing else matters” mentality.
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