Top Ten Topics That Scare Me Off Picking Up a Book

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

For the most part, I think of myself as a really open-minded reader. I read children's books, middle grade, YA, and adult. I read most genres, and I do both print and audio formats. There's a lot that interests me, but certain subjects make me want to steer clear.

1. Infidelity - I loathe infidelity stories, largely because they're usually romanticized. If someone cheats, I want them to suffer for it, preferably dying alone. Okay, well, I wouldn't usually go that far, but they shouldn't get to end up happily with the person on whom they cheated - and, no, both of them cheating doesn't mean they're right for each other. If a blurb hints at infidelity, I'm unlikely to go out of my way to procure the book.

2.Mermaids and Furies - Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not completely opposed to mermaid or fury stories. However, I've been bitten more than once by my lack of caution in selecting them. For whatever reason, mermaids seem to bring out the worst in gender dynamics, and I honestly don't know what happened to the furies.

3. Drug Addictions - Though I've been really getting into the darker contemporaries, I still struggle to be interested in books about substance abuse. Part of me really wants to try Ellen Hopkins, but the subject matter makes me nervous. Drugs never held any appeal for me, so diving into someone's stream of consciousness thoughts as they get high doesn't rank high on my list of things to do. I suspect this fear stems back to my college course on counterculture, where I was made to read books like Naked Lunch and On the Road, which are just not my thing.

4. Divorce - In this case, I'm referring to the perspective of being one of the people in the divorce. Part of my reticence here is that it tends to come hand in hand with infidelity. On top of that, divorce is so far away from my own life experiences that I can't really relate to it, and only the most mind-blowing book will do anything for me. Old people (yes, I know young people can get divorced, but married people always seem older than me somehow) fighting don't interest me.

5. Mysteries - Being loath to pick up mysteries does eliminate a broad swath of books. I'm not saying I won't read them, but I don't like that to be the main element of a story. Exceptions to the mysteries scaring me away rule are serial killer stories, which I find it hard to resist.

6. Romance - Wait! Hold on! Let me explain myself. I love having romance in my books, BUT the caveat is that I don't want it to be the center of the blurb if the book is genre fiction. If it's a contemporary or historical romance, and the blurb is all about the hot boy, cool; if it's science fiction or paranormal or dystopian, and the blurb is all about the hot boy, that book and I will likely have problems.

7. Graceling meets X-Men meets Pride and Prejudice - I've gotten REALLY sick of this marketing campaign. "You mean this book is all my favorite things rolled up in some bacon with a side of mashed potatoes? Where do I sign up?" That's what I used to say, but now I say "It's a trap!"

8. Adult Romance Author Writing Teen - Again, this isn't something I avoid a hundred percent of the time, but, if I know going in, I won't read these unless I've heard a lot of praise from reviewers I trust. Too often, the YA offerings are sci fi or fantasy settings with a lot of promise, but then the world doesn't get built and cheesy romance ensues. I'm not saying romance authors aren't talented, but such things are not my style.

9. Pregnancy - True story. I picked up How to Love by Katie Catugno at BEA and, when I got back, read through the blurb. That's when I found out it was about teenage pregnancy, at which point I tried to get rid of it, and failed, though I could have tried harder. Basically, I will try to push through this fear, just like the heroine will have to push through her contractions.

10. Babies - The only thing worse for me than pregnancy? An actual baby, with the crying and the pooping and the lack of reasoning capabilities. I refused to read In the After, because one of the characters is called Baby and I was afraid she was a baby, but am planning to read it again, because she's apparently a kid. This is how far my fear goes.

There you have it. I am a person of many fears and many gifs. Also, I made the mistake of looking for gifs about babies; you do not know my horror.