Top Ten Tuesdays: Books I Will Probably Never Read

Top Ten Tuesdays is an original and weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

 

 

Top Ten Books I Will Probably Never Read

 

 

There is probably no rhyme or reason for this list.  These are just the first books that popped into my head as books that I will mostly probably never read... for one reason or another.  Either the premise is something I'm not interested in, community reviews have aided my decisions, or I was just never interested in the genre or type of book in the first place.

 

A lot of times, there are just certain subjects that I don't bother considering at all just because I've never been interested... like Paranormal Romances, specifically with vampire themes.  This has nothing to do with Twilight or even the influx of YA vampire books--since the beginning of time, this was just a genre or subject in books I'd never been interested in.  With my interests laying in so many other directions, why force myself to consider reading a genre I've never really cared for?

 

There are other genres I don't care for either--there was an obsession with something called Monster Porn for a while, I think... or something like that.  Amusing as that sounds, my answer is "No."

 

But let's be honest:  There are probably hundreds of books out there I will probably never read if only because of all the reasons I have listed, but most importantly because they didn't grab my attention.  And realistically, I can't read every book ever written.

 

Here is just a list of the ten that happened to ping on my radar and I indefinitely tacked a "Not Interested" sign on them, or an "I am interested, but I honestly don't think I'll ever pick it up" stamp on them.

 

 

Vampire Themed Books

 

As stated already, I've never been all that interested in vampire-themed books.  I've seen plenty of vampire-themed movies, this is true, but they've never really been my favorites.  These particular five vampire-themed books are the ones that stood out in my mind when I was pondering this week's Top Ten Tuesday topic.

 

Ever since the big influx of vampire books when Twilight was popular, I've always been asked about other, similar-themed books or series:  Have I read such and such series?  Is it good?  Why haven't I read such and such series?  They are popular and they are trendy and they are what a large target audience like now-a-days, so how come I haven't read them?

 

If anyone is ever curious, I've found that I have been on shaky ground with certain types of paranormal genre-based books that are focused on romance (Paranormal Romances, if you will).  And if they have vampires in them, it most likely will NOT draw my interest.  Of course, that doesn't mean that I will NEVER read a book with vampires in it--I'm sure there are a few out there that may interest me at some point in my reading journey.

 

 

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton

Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead

 

I had borrowed Interview With the Vampire from a friend who loves Anne Rice.  I tried reading it twice, but just never managed to get into it.  Whether it was the subject matter, the way the book was written, or maybe even just that I was in college and had a busy schedule and just wasn't interested in making time for this book... I don't know.  But I'll probably never read it.

 

Vampire Academy is just one of those popular series books that people always ask me if I've read.  The answer is no.  Will I ever read it?  Probably not.  I'm just not really interested.  The same goes with Guilty Pleasures and the rest of the Anita Blake series; I'm just not interested.

 

 

New Moon by Stephanie Meyer

Club Dead by Charlaine Harris

 

I read the first half of Twilight and got bored and frustrated with it, so the likelihood of reading New Moon is fairly close to zero percent.  I may or may not pick up the first Twilight book and try to read it again one of these days to finish it and give it a fair chance (I have since read and finished many other books far worse), but the chances of continuing the series is pretty slim considering my humongous reading list at present.  

 

Same goes for Club Dead--I have read the first Sookie Stackhouse book and didn't much care for it; I might read the second book in the series, but I really doubt I'll get any further in the series than that.

 

 

Other Types of Books

 

Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

 

 

I started reading books containing erotica about two years ago and found that a lot of them really aren't as bad as I used to think they were.  Some are breezy and cute and fun.  I don't specifically pick up books that are 100% Erotica or Contemporary Romance with Erotica or the like.  I've become hugely obsessed with Romantic Suspense novels that have a healthy dose of explicit sex scenes--sometimes these Romantic Suspense books are really Erotica that uses Romantic Suspense as a springboard.

 

But I'm not sure I'll ever be able to get into BDSM type Erotica.  That would be reason number one as to why I'll probably never read Fifty Shades of Grey.  Reason number two would be the community reviews wherein a lot of trusted reviewers I follow have noted that Fifty Shades is Twilight fanfiction with characters who have the same personalities... it just happens to be an adult book with sex and BDSM.

 

 

Anything else by Nicholas Sparks that I have not read

 

I have a read a total of three Nicholas Sparks books.  Two were enjoyable (though I don't want to test my luck by trying a re-read of them and would really rather just stick with the memory of having liked them).  The third was kind of crappy.  By that time, my naive teenaged-self realized that there was a pattern to a Nick Sparks romance... and I didn't like that pattern.

 

So after committing one of my big "no-no's" for book reading (skipping forward to the end to see how everything turns out) when I had gotten At First Sight, I finally decided that Mr. Sparks' books just are NOT for me and I have since moved on and gotten rid of all but one of my Nicholas Sparks books.

 

After all, why read books if you know you're not going to enjoy them?

 

 

 

The Princess of Landover by Terry Brooks

Stone of Tears by Terry Goodkind

Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray

 

Terry Brooks is an author I enjoyed for a good while.  I have plans to read a lot of his Shannara series (and sub-series and sub-trilogies and etc...).  I had gotten into the Magic Kingdom of Landover series and breezed through the first four books pretty quickly.  I haven't read the fifth book because I needed a hiatus from Landover as the stories started becoming kind of repetitive.  Chances are, however, that I may pick up that fifth book, read it, then stop there.  The Princess of Landover, then, will become an unfortunate casualty since I'm not sure I care to read it.

 

I read Terry Goodkind's first Sword of Truth book; while it was enjoyable to an extent, I honestly didn't find it intriguing enough to read through an entire series surrounding the same two people with, as my brother had put it, the same repetitive story lines (yes, he's read all the books and didn't much care for them and I trust his judgment).  So I won't be reading the next book or following the series at all.

 

Finally, we come to Libba Bray.  I have a love/hate relationship with Libba Bray's Gemma Doyle trilogy.  It was actually an interesting story, well-written, and after the initial struggle at the beginning of the first book, got me hooked.  So I thought that maybe I'd give her another go with The Diviners...  I haven't finished The Diviners.  I have restarted it three times and got as far as a little under midpoint.  

 

The one thing I struggle with in a Libba Bray book, I've realized, is that she more often than not does not get to the point of her story.  Too many things were happening in The Diviners and I still had no idea where the story was headed even after half the book was read.  And sometimes, even when you can kind of see where the story is headed, it takes its sweet time getting around to it.  Thus, even if I manage to go back and finish The Diviners in the future, I will probably just stop there.  So that's a no go on the second book, Lair of Dreams.

 

 

***

 

No Honorable Mentions this time.  If I had to list every other book I possibly won't read, the list could go on.  There are a lot of books that I sometimes will just glance at and go "Nah..."  And then there are some genres that I won't even touch, if only because they definitely aren't my cuppa.

 

 

Original post: anitactruong.booklikes.com/post/1148833/top-ten-tuesdays-books-i-will-probably-never-read