Five Book Topics I will NEVER Quit Reading About
and Five Bookish Habits I Need to Quit
Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review.
I love when the TTT allows me to pick a special topic (that gives a bit of guidance!)… but it usually means I can’t pick which topic I want to use. I decided to split this week’s list into two lists of five. The general topic is ten bookish things I want to quit or have quit. I decided to go with five book topics I’ll never quit reading about and five bookish habits I need to quit. Without further ado…
Some of these may qualify as overdone tropes and some of them are just fun things I really will always love reading about. Some of my favorite books in the world feature one or more of these topics. I’ve included some similar topics in my read-bait series (yet to be finished…) because if any of these five things are included in a book, it’ll probably end up on my TBR and/or quickly become a favorite.
Give meeeeee. Any book that’s full of banter is one for me. When there’s any HINT of this trope in the plot description, I must have it. I love the idea that two people can bicker so much that they eventually fall for each other. I’m not a huge fan in general of the cookie cutter romances where they’re instantly attracted to each other. I need a little bit of hate and annoyance to pop in there initially. It’s just too fun to watch.
Any Emmy & Oliver fans out there? I mean, honestly, how perfect. If you asked me when I was younger who I was going to marry, I would have given you the name of my childhood neighbor and best friend. He was my everything for so many years and I was utterly convinced we had to end up together. That was totally my dream. I love reading stories where that actually happens for some of the characters. I’m okay with not living that dream at the moment, so I have to take my ~feels~ for that particular situation elsewhere. I just love it so much. THEY’RE MEANT TO BE, YA KNOW? (Gale + Katniss. That’s all I’ll say.)
BONUS POINTS if it’s father-daughter feels. I love my dad so much and he’s been there for me way more than I ever thought he would need to be. I think it’s hugely annoying when YA parents are missing from the story. Any book that has family feels of some kind is definitely going to make it on my list. I love when the family’s happy and enjoys each other’s company. Having present parents and siblings can really make a book feel well-rounded. Of course, I’ll still read books where there is family drama instead of happiness. Seeing a group of people come together after some hard times can be really great – kind of like in last week’s TTT book.
Many books in my pre-blogging days involved boarding schools or private schools of some kind. For some reason, they just draw me right in. I always thought it would be cool to attend one myself, so I like to live vicariously through book characters. I have quite a few more on my list to read, but there are so many classics that take place in that setting too. Bonus points if the people are rich and snobby and mean girls. I don’t know why, but that was my SHIT back in the day. I think younger-Lauren was too bitchy.
Sorry, if I can reference my favorite aspect/episodes of Community, I will. Anyways, I love books featuring parallel universes or multiple timelines or dual choices that get explored in two timelines. LOVE EM ALL. Give me them. I’ve talked about this more times than I can count on the blog, so I won’t bore you with all that shit again.
I don’t think I have a lot of bad habits when it comes to reading or blogging. Honestly, I hate to sound like a goodie-two-shoes, but I do a really good job of staying on top of my reading and review-writing. After I finish a book, I write the review within the next 24 hours – most of the time even less. I’m way ahead on my Goodreads challenge. However, there’s always room for improvement! Here are the five bookish habits I need to quit.
I spent a lot of money on a nice Foxy Dori along with everyone else… and I don’t use it as much as I should! I love flipping through it and the fact that I have one, but I’m so bad at taking book notes. I just hate it. I even tried to simplify my note-taking process… and it still didn’t work. I literally write the title, author, date started, and date finished, and then the rest of the page is for notes. Nothing crazy to fill out or think about. Just my thoughts. I really just hate writing down notes while reading. I’ll have some spurts of time where I’m really good about note-taking (which I love, because they’re super helpful for reviews) and times where I’m just terrible. This section should really say “avoiding my notebook like the plague because I hate taking notes even though I should.”
This is something I always need to work on even though it’s so stupid. I’m not a person with a lot of hobbies. Really. I mean, I spend my free time reading, watching football, watching TV in general, or building Lego with Chris. I know a lot of people who somehow balance TV shows, reading, kids, baking, knitting, cooking, running, exercising… literally so many more things than me. I have a problem where I always think: I SHOULD BE READING RIGHT NOW NOT WATCHING FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. It’s soooo stupid because I can do whatever I want with my free time. At this point, I could stop reading for a month or two and still have plenty of reviews and posts scheduled. I need to relax and realize that I am a free woman who is allowed to binge Netflix at night. Or in the morning. Or whenever I want!
To be honest, if my Goodreads challenge was less than 175 books, I think #2 here wouldn’t even be a problem. I don’t know why I spend so much time and energy worrying about my fucking Goodreads challenge. The kicker? At the time of writing this, I’m seven books ahead in my challenge. SEVEN books ahead. I have no reason to worry at all and still I do it. I would love to put my Goodreads challenge right out of my head because it honestly has no bearing on my life whatsoever.
I used to be worse about this when I first started blogging, but it’s still a THING. I have a tendency to follow the crowd towards certain books even whent hey don’t necessarily sound like Lauren books. I was a new release chaser in the beginning; I figured that would be the one way people would want to read my blog. I’ve come to realize that this hobby is only going to become a chore if I keep acting like reading IS a chore. I don’t want to read a book everyone else wants to read? I won’t read it! Honestly, how hard is it? I love reading backlist books lately. It’s nice and refreshing to see older books you may have missed. I personally enjoy reading reviews for books that have been out for a while. Some books really just don’t sound like ME, so I will avoid them and not force it.
I have gotten better at this too! Even though I think I’ve DNFed a total of three books, like, ever. But still I’m improving. I don’t know why but I feel like I have this weird need to finish books, even if I don’t care what’s going to happen in them. I hope to continue to improve on this because there are lots of books I just KNOW I’m not going to like – why waste my time? If I’m not hooked right away, there’s really no harm in setting it down.
I absolutely love the friends to romance stories! I need to read Emmy & Oliver for sure. Here is my top ten: http://bookbinges.blogspot.it/2015/10/top-ten-tuesday-top-book-series-i-quit
Omg yesss you do.
Gale & Katniss – yes!!! So much yes! I am with you on friends falling in love and hate to love relationships. Always my favorite! And I love a good boarding school book. Family drama is always fun too. I can take or leave parallel dimensions. But 4 of 5 is a pretty good match. 🙂
I use Trello on my phone for notes while reading, and it is hard. And DNFing is super hard. Sometimes I want to finish a bad book just so I can give it a bad rating and stop other people from wasting their time. (I don’t rate books I don’t finish.) I also sometimes feel bad when I choose to watch TV instead of reading. You’re not the only one.
It’s funny to think about…because “readers” who aren’t “bloggers” don’t think about DNFing books or feeling bad about TV > reading. I may have just sparked a discussion post idea…
I love strong family relationships in books. There should be more of that. I agree with the note taking. I admit that I have been getting better at it. Also, I need to work on avoiding books with so much hype. If I do read overhyped books when everyone’s going crazy over them I tend to not like them.
Family relationships just make the books so much more fleshed out! Note-taking is so unnecessarily hard for me. I just never remember or ignore it haha.
Oh I share so many bad habits with you, including always thinking about my Goodreads Challenge. I always want to stay on top of that, like right now I am kind of behind, and it makes me pretty sad.
YES TO PARALLEL UNIVERSES. I love reading about that topic even though I’m super nitpicky about the topic haha.
Haha I know what you mean! Ugh my Goodreads challenge is such an unnecessary stress in my life hah
I used to find it so hard to DNF books! I always felt I owed it to the book to keep on reading, no matter how I was feeling while reading it. But then I realized that I wasn’t doing myself or the book any favors, and since that moment, it’s gotten much easier for me to say goodbye to a read that I’m not particularly enjoying!
I know what you mean, I essentially felt the same way! It’s important to put it down if you’re not feeling it. There are so many other books out there!
Loved this post! I love the tropes you mentioned because a lot of them really do work for me as well. I love the whole best friends falling in love and especially when there is a strong mention of family because my own family is so important to me. As for things to quit, you make good reasoning there too. I think we all need reminders sometimes to not beat ourselves up when we don’t have enough time to do all the reading we want to be able to do…
Exactly!
[…] popular TTT a few weeks ago introduced me to a lot of people’s bad bookish habits that they want to quit. Along with […]