Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, it’s time for unpopular book opinions! I’m always a little hesitant of subjects like this, because it’s easy for people’s feelings to be hurt when they find out something they do bothers someone else. So let me say that this are just opinions, and the book world is wide and deep and there is room for EVERYONE in it. But I can’t pretend I don’t have some hot takes to share.
I love audiobooks, but I don’t think it’s the same as reading: I don’t “count” audio toward my reading totals for the year, because while it’s another way to consume stories, I don’t think of it as reading. It activates entirely different parts of my brain and while I am listening to an every-increasing number of them, I just don’t think it’s “reading”.
The classics are worth reading: I feel like a lot of people automatically dismiss classics as antiquated or boring and some of them are, but reading classics over the past ten years or so has made my understanding of and appreciation for literature so much richer.
I’m skeptical of people who read only or virtually only one genre: I don’t care what that genre is…YA, nonfiction, chick lit. There are incredible books written in every genre and sticking to the one place you feel the most comfortable probably means you’re missing out on something that could expand your horizons.
That being said, read what makes you want to read more: Side-eye though I may, I think the “right” things to read are the things you enjoy, and that make you want to pick up the next thing!
I love the Harry Potter series, but I am ready to be done with the expanded universe: I grew up with Harry, and those books have a special place in my heart. But I wish J.K. would stop tinkering with the world and trying to add things on. It often seems reactionary to (usually valid) critique.
If your book can’t survive spoilers, it’s not a very good book: I feel like this about all media, but if your book hinges on the “surprise” and can’t stand alone, it’s a sign of serious underlying issues. A good book takes you on a journey, and there is a lot of pleasure in encountering the unexpected on that journey, but if that’s taken away and it all falls apart…write better characters and a more compelling plot.
There are a lot of series that should be standalone books: I’m not a series hater, but in my experience, there are many more of them that would have benefitted from stopping after the first one than those that really did have multiple books worth of story in them. I am almost never here for books that end on cliffhangers, one of the most cherished devices of a series.
I like a spunky heroine as much as anyone, but I am a little over the trope: I am myself high-spirited, as are many women and girls. But not every heroine needs to be so, most especially when it would be very anachronistic for them to be openly so. One of the things I enjoy about reading historical fiction is thinking about how someone in a different era would have conceived of themselves and their world and “as a modern teenager” is almost never accurate.
Most sex scenes should not be written: They’re much more often cringey than they are erotic and very seldom actually add anything to the narrative. If they do need to be included (and sometimes they do!), they should be brief.
It’s okay to not be on the DNF train: This is about me and me only, I have NO judgment for people that stop reading books they aren’t enjoying! But people who do believe in putting a book down and never picking up again get very pushy about this being the only appropriate way to organize one’s reading life. I finish everything I start, no one else has to, but leave me alone and let me hate-finish things in peace.