Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, featuring a different top 10 theme each week.

This week’s theme is Top Ten Words/Topics That Will Make You NOT pick up a book. I can’t necessarily say that there are ten words that are absolute no-nos for me, but here are a few words and general concepts that will pretty much guarantee that a book isn’t for me. (And of course, I absolutely reserve the right to change my mind at a moment’s notice!)

1) Legal thriller/courtroom drama: Mostly, these just put me to sleep. I’ve read some Scott Turow and John Grisham, but I’m done now, thanks.

2) Shopping/”shopoholic”: I just can’t stand fiction that makes me feel like I’m reading an issue of Vogue or W. No name dropping of designer brands, please! No catwalks, no models, no fashion. Not for me, especially not in my reading.

3) Baking/Cupcakes: What’s with all those books with cutesie dessert themes? I love to eat (especially desserts!), but I’m not a foodie. I don’t want to read about people’s cooking and baking habits in my fiction.

4) Angels: First it was vampires, then werewolves, then a host of other supernatural beings, but it seems that angels have been getting more and more popular in YA fiction over the last several years… and I have no interest at all.

5) Brides: Nope, I don’t want to read fiction where the sole focus is on wedding planning, getting engaged, or landing Mr. Right.

6) Academia: Novels set in universities, dealing with interdepartmental struggles, fights for tenure, etc just don’t appeal to me. Unless there’s a twist, as in A Discovery of Witches or The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane — in which case, scholarly research totally works!

7) “My year of”: It seem like half the non-fiction titles that get lots of attention are versions of “My Year Of…” — my year of following the Bible, my year of reading self-help books, my year of not spending money, on and on.

8) “The Next”: This is really more a complaint about marketing than about the books themselves, but I wish publishers would stop blurbing new books with the phrase “the next” — as in “the next Harry Potter!” or “the next Twilight!” or “the next Hunger Games!”. When I see those words on a book cover, I just think  that the publisher/marketer must be kind of desperate. Let it stand on its own! Books billed this way almost never live up to the hype, and it’s not fair to expect them to.

9) Heinous crimes/serial killers/grisly murders: My tolerance for reading about hideous, violent crime has shrunken to almost nil. It’s not that I need everything neat and rose-colored, and I don’t mind reading about awful events if it’s in the service of an amazing plot. But I will just never be drawn to a book that’s strictly a police procedural plotline.

10) Covers like these:

No bare chests on my books. ‘Nuff said.

I realize that this list makes me sound like a big curmudgeon. But truthfully, it was a lot easier putting together a list of words/topics that are my “yesses”! Are any of my turn-offs on your list this week? Or do you love any of the ones that I hate? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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