Top Ten Tuesday

TTT is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week's theme is: top ten words/ topics that make me not pick up a book.

I'm going to be a little goody-goody here and say none, since I'm a school librarian and feel that, in order to be effective in reader's advisory, I should read across the genres, including the ones I dislike or am so over. That doesn't mean I won't be giving it the stink-eye or be dragged kicking and screaming to the book though. Here they are:

1. Any book that is predicted to be "the next big thing," a la Harry Potter, Hunger Games, etc. especially if it accompanied by tons of hype, especially in the blog-o-sphere as in, gushy, hyperbolic "reviews." This can backfire for me though. Daughter of Smoke and Bone got a ton of well-deserved hype, but I avoided it forever because of it and because I was also over paranormal (see # 5).

2. Any book penned by a celebrity. Jaimie Lee Curtis and John Lithgow excluded. Okay, I'll throw Chris Colfer in there because I think he does it because he loves to write.

3. Any YA/ Children's book penned by an adult author because that's where the money is, especially a best-selling adult author. Yeah, I'm looking at you, whats-your-name. Wait while I look it up...John Grisham.

(And while I'm snarking, let me stop to complain about parents who shoot these pieces of crap books to the top of the best seller lists because of the celebrity of the author. Read reviews folks.)

4. Bodice-rippers, romance, any book by Harlequin. I absolute cannot abide by disingenuous heroines or heroines that need to be swept off their feet or heroines, if they have any intellect at all at the beginning, lose it as soon as the domineering male enters the picture.

5. Paranormal romance. At first, I was intrigued by the idea of vampires and angels and demons and, even zombies but then they all seemed to devolve into love triangles. As I mentioned before, I like my heroines smart and capable.

6. The term chick-lit. Haven't seen it much lately though. That's a good thing.

7. Horror. I am easily scared. Hate horror films and don't watch them and would totally avoid horror books but for my need to know the genre.

8. Self-help books. They all say pretty much the same thing.

9. Crime/ mystery. I never liked them when I read for me because they tended to be brutal. Now that I'm reading for a younger audience, they tend to be edgier than I'd like for my audience, or so gentle and ridiculously obvious.

10. Christian. Didn't even know the genre existed until I got a couple of review queries and stumbled upon some blogs that specialize in that type of book. I'm all for a character wrestling with his or her faith in a book, but not one that proselytizes or pushes an agenda.