Top Ten (Minus Five) Tuesday - What Makes Me Not Want to Read a Book

Happy Top Ten Tuesday! This blog hop is brought to us by That Artsy Reader Girl. On her blog you will see links to the blogs of others who are participating in Top Ten Tuesday. If you are a blogger, feel free to join the party through the linky on her blog post.

Today's suggested topic is Things That Make Me Not Want to Read a Book. Let me say that these are not automatic deal breakers for me. There are a few instances where I will read a book no matter what. For example, if it's part of the book club I participate in every month, I will read it. If it's a biography of someone I really want to learn more about, I'll read it. However, if it's part of a series and it contains the following elements, I will likely not continue reading the series. (For the book club I'm in, we only read first in series.) In the case of a biography or a book that's not part of a series, I may read more from that author, but it probably won't be high priority.

The only exception to this that I can think of is cozy mysteries, most of which involve murder and perhaps a little bit of gore. However, the murder occurs "off screen" and the gore is minimal. The primary focus is on solving the puzzle in a cozy-feeling community. Some cozies do contain cursing. If I know this ahead of time, I won't read those unless they are part of the book club.

There are really only five turn-offs I can think of. These apply to books and movies.

1.  Cursing

I find cursing to be distracting. It takes away from my enjoyment of books and movies.

2.  Gore

Some gore is tolerable, but I don't like when it becomes excessive.

3.  Physical Abuse

Any kind of physical abuse in books and movies is a turnoff for me.

4.  Vulgarity

Cursing can be a part of this, but vulgarity takes it even further. It's pretty much non-existent in cozies.

5. Front and Back Covers

The saying goes, "don't judge a book by its cover". I disagree. I think the cover can say a lot about a book. If any of the four elements listed above are included on the front or back cover, I most likely won't read it.

One thing I love about StoryGraph for recording and reviewing books is the section where you can input or read content warnings. When reviewing a book, you can select content warnings from a list and indicate how much they occur in the book. If you're reading a review, you can see a summary of the content warnings that were most selected or you can choose to read a list of all content warnings every reviewer selected. If I'm on the fence about whether or not to read a book, I often look at this feature. It's a quick way to find out if a book contains any of the above elements. Once in a while, I find that a content warning isn't listed when it should have been, but I think as StoryGraph grows and attracts more reviewers, this will improve.

What about you? What makes you not want to read a book?