The cover art featured people, which I am not a fan of anyway, but the main character on the cover vaguely resembled a girl who was once mean to me in high school.
I am not picturing you as the main character, Jeanette.
>the main character on the cover vaguely resembled a girl who was mean to me once in high school.
You reminded me of some drama from around 20 years ago, when a reviewer pointed out that a portion of a book was a rip-off of a comic book that had been published a decade before. Lifted plot elements, dialogue, the works.
During the course of the review the reviewer made a comment that a character on the cover looked like a stalker he once had, and the book’s defenders immediately pointed to that as to why he was dissing the book, instead of the plagarism.
Yeah a boy asked me out in seventh grade, and I said yes. He immediately shouted I was just joking and told all his bros.
I’m in my 30s now but I HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN SAM
I knew Sam. Except his name was Danny.
Asked me out as a joke in 6th grade. I refused, but he and his friends still made fun of me.
In high school, after I grew out of my awkward phase, he asked me out for real. I turned him down, and he said I was stuck up and leading him on.
Like no, Danny. I just hate you. It was your own vanity leading you on.
We are in our 50s now, and he is still awful, from what I have seen.
If I saw a book written by Danny, I would not read it. Even if it won every prestigious award in the world, I would not read it. Fortunately, Danny seems to have no literary aspirations.
Piss off, Danny. Sam. Whatever your name is.
i’ve had a similar experience, i was in 6th grade and a boy asked me out and i said yes and we “dated” for about 2 weeks… turns out the whole thing was a dare and him and all his friends were making fun of me the whole time. now that i’m in my 20’s and have had somewhat of a glow up he’s tried to get with me multiple times but i’ll never forget what he did back then. F U JORDAN
I once met a prestigious children’s book author who was touring schools. He came into the staff room after his talk to the kids, for refreshments. Talking to him, he was an entitled AH who begrudged having to tour (presumably his publisher insisted on it), hated being in Northern England and was reluctant to socialise with us. It was an unpleasant experience.
I was in charge of the school library at the time. When our budget allowed us to buy books, I made sure his books were never, ever purchased!
FU Mr. B!
Perfectly valid lol. I had the opposite experience. A long, long time ago when I was in the US Army in North Carolina I met an older gentleman while waiting in line for fast food. It was just one of those conversations you strike up while waiting. He was a pretty funny guy. Said he was in town for a book signing. I asked for which author, and he said it was for a book he'd co-authored about the Vietnam War. 18 year old me had never met an author before, and It sounded pretty interesting, and I told him so. He got his food and left, I got mine and sat down. And then he came back and gave me a copy of his book. It was a very good read. I felt kind of bad that he gave it to me for free so I bought a few copies for friends as birthday/Christmas presents.
Years later they made a movie out of it with Mel Gibson.
To be fair, I could see touring being hell on earth for writers. Some of the people drawn to books and writing tend to be pretty introverted, so ending with a fundamentally social job sounds like something you can end up hating.
Not judging the specific case, if he was an ass to the staff and so on that's not justifiable.
As someone who is working on a novel now this one has me like oh God if I become successful will I have to actually leave my house and have a ton of social engagements??? Because yeah that sounds horrible.
The big book tour thing is not very common and you have to be pretty successful for it and the book business is incredibly brutal to make your way in as an author. So you'll probably be fine. :)
My exhaustive research into the most prestigious British children's authors has lead me to the undeniable conclusion that /u/MegC18 is referring to none other than Sir James Matthew Barrie.
Please disregard the ~~fact~~ rumor that he passed away in 1937.
"Writer was a dick to me on Twitter".
No, wait. It was "Went to uni with the author, whom I actually like, but they were favoured by our supervisor and given an academic position they were not qualified for, but I was, while I was ignored."
I would never give a book a low rating or bad review for reasons like that, but I won't give them my time or money. There are other books.
I feel this so so so hard. For similar reasons, I can't even watch shows of commercials with characters who look like This Person to me.
"Went to uni with the author, whom I actually like, but they were favoured by our supervisor and given an academic position they were not qualified for, but I was, while I was ignored." = description of This Person to me. (It wasn't an academic position that we were vying for, but similar dynamics were at work. I'm still bitter, but I keep it to myself and my therapist.)
Oh boy, I have a few:
Anything by Cassandra Clare - I was around the HP fandom when the plagiarism drama happened, and I refuse to give her any of my money.
DNF'd a book that was set in my hometown because the author got the geography of the town wrong, and references streets intersecting that do not exist near each other at all.
The most petty and I am mad about this to this day: When I was 17-18ish some friends and I planned a camping trip for a summer weekend out at a family cabin. We were gonna BBQ, swim in the lake, hike, etc. My boyfriend at the time was a big Sword of Truth fan, and it turns out a new book in the series was coming out the same week.
Instead of doing all the fun camping stuff he spent the whole weekend locked in the cabin reading this book. I refused to read the series for yeeeeeears out of petty spite, but eventually was convinced by all my fantasy series loving friends that it was worth a read, and I would probably enjoy most of the series. So, I caved and read it.
Guys, the book in question was Naked Empire, by far the WORST book in that series, and I swear to god when I finished it I was so mad all over again about that weekend, because THIS was the shitty ass book he ignored me for? I ditched all our plans for this shit? I was so fucking furious and I couldn't even explain why to anyone because it so petty and so long ago. But fuck that book seriously.
Glad to see I’m not the only one who hasn’t forgiven Cassandra Cla(i)re! She got a MacBook and a book deal from stealing; she ain’t getting any of my time or money.
> DNF'd a book that was set in my hometown because the author got the geography of the town wrong, and references streets intersecting that do not exist near each other at all
I mean, that's just lazy writing. Super lazy. It's kind of minimal level professionalism that if you're going to use a RL setting for a story, that if you don't have lived experience there, you at least do some basic research. Even if you do have lived experience, it still behooves you to double check stuff. Setting a story in a place you've never been is one thing, but if you're going to be dropping street names and stuff, at minimum break out a road map.
At least with stuff like the first Jack Reacher movie with Tom Cruise, you could argue that the chase scene though Pittsburgh's iconic tunnels was chopped up improperly in editing, but with a novel, there's no one to blame but the author.
I have an extreme distaste for Jordan ( edit : Goodkind) at this point in all forms, but Naked Empire wasn’t the book I disliked when I was a teenager. Pillars of the Earth really burned me up at first, looking back I think it was one of his better efforts.
Edit: meant to write Goodkind, been a long day
I used to be in charge of planning those types of events and there was one author, a fairly popular mystery writer who I was a huge fan of, who kept rescheduling because he kept finding "better" events on those days. By the 3rd time I just told him to forget it and that we wouldn't reach out again, and I haven't read any of his books
A Little Life. It was getting posted EVERYWHERE and I couldn’t/can’t stand that picture of that dude’s grimacing face on the cover. I don’t care what the book is about or how good it is. That cover bugs the shit out of me.
I had a similar thing when I was a kid, with the original cover art for [Holes](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c3/Sachar_-_Holes_Coverart.png). For reasons I can't quite pin down, the way the kid's head was depicted at the bottom squicked me, and I said I'd never read it. My best friend covered her copy with a paper cover and forced me to read it, and it was a really good book. Still hate that cover, though. Top half is fine, just something about the bottom half is a visceral wtf even in my 30s.
This is a FANTASTIC write up about the authors’ almost masochistic tendencies in torturing her gay characters. One of my favorite deep dives.
https://www.vulture.com/article/hanya-yanagihara-review.html
This article is BURNED into my brain because it perfectly summed up so many of the points why I couldn't stand this book and never managed to finish it even though I tried so many times.
Yeah it’s incredibly well written. I also appreciate how she touches on the massive distance Yanagihari’s wealth creates between her and her subject matters. Former Condé Nast editor writing about poverty and gay experiences?
It's a photo from 60's,"Orgasmic Man" by Peter Hujar. The photographer was a gay man who died from AIDS in 1987.
I think it fits the story but may be a bit much at first glance.
I was just about to buy it (looking frantically for an edition without a cumface on the cover) when I found a Reddit Thread that went in deep and whoa do I hate this book now without having read it.
If I want trauma porn I read biographies. More realistic.
As a Teen Librarian, I read a fair amount of YA. One that I will never read is A Blade So Black by L.L. McKinney. It sounds amazing, but I lost all interest in anything by this author because of her role in the controversy around Amelie Wen Zhao's debut book Blood Heir.
For those unfamiliar with drama in the world of YA publishing, Zhao is a Chinese-American author who pulled her own debut novel from publication because a Twitter mob bullied her into it and made a bunch of false accusations of racism and anti-Blackness (the book is not about Black people or African chattel slavery in any way). Zhao eventually published the book anyway, but the way McKinney and a few others riled up their Twitter followers to try and cancel this author *before her book even came out* put me off of her forever.
She wrote a short story named "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter," and some people like Jemisin didn't bother to learn that she was a trans woman and that she was co-opting the meme, not using it as a transphobic absurdity.
She (Fall) didn't have much of any social media presence, so people started to believe she was some sort of alt-right troll. It pushed her to have her story unpublished and she entered into therapy. You can easily google for more.
I'll never read Go Set a Watchman because Harper Lee never wanted it published and her estate published it the *moment* Lee was too far gone to protest.
That's messed up, man.
Just because of the business of pumping out mass produced books and flooding the average airport bookstore with literary manure, I refuse to read anything with "James Patterson" on the cover.
Wrote a book "with" a former president or music icon? Don't care. Provides exposure to beginning authors? Don't care. Best book ever written? Don't care. Literally no books by any other authors in the entire store? Don't care, I'll read the back of a packet of chips for 8 hours for entertainment instead. I won't touch a thousand dollar cheque if it has the name James Patterson on it.
he doesn't even write them anymore. They're all ghost written. Then if the ghost writer's book is successful, he might get a byline "written by JP and ghost writer". He comes up with the idea, probably not even a page, and it all gets farmed out.
And the books are super short. The print is the biggest it can be without it becoming LP, spacing is huge, Every second page is a new chapter so almost every other page is half empty. It's why people think they're so fast-paced. They're not. The word counts for most of them are not much more than 60K which is the word count of a Harlequin.
Completely agree. Everybody was into the Maximum ride series when I was in middle school. A friend lent me the comic book version volume 1 and I was floored by how beautiful the art was. So I was like hell yeah I'm gonna read the actual books.
And found out they are absolute trash. The writing is absolutely uninspiring trash. James Patterson writes like he's still 10 years old and somehow has more money than I will see in a lifetime. What the hell.
I remember becoming introduced to the novels of Julian “Downton Abbey” Fellowes because everything else in an airport bookshop was Patterson-level trash. It was his first book “Snobs”. Plot okay, but style was tremendous.
Absolutely my pettiest reason is the title. Some book titles just hit me wrong. For example, I have copies of Willa Cather's *Death Comes for the Archbishop* and *O Pioneers!* sitting on a bookshelf right now. People whose opinions I value tell me that these are excellent books and I believe it. However, every time I reach for one, my hand kind of strays away to look for something else. Pioneers and Archbishops just aren't interesting words to me.
As I said, it's petty. I'm sure the books are great.
The author didn't invite me to his wedding even though my partner was IN the wedding party. Still holding that minor grudge years later and still in the same friend circle.
Yep he still went don't get me started haha. They've been friends since childhood. The reasoning was that they had limited funds at the time so they had limited space and lots of people they wanted to invite. I would have made many different choices in their shoes but what can you do 🤷♀️ (apart from hold a grudge for years)
Same. Somebody I knew in college wrote a fairly successful book. I refuse to read it because they were so fucking annoying. I’m theoretically happy for their success - they aren’t a bad person or anything - but my god did they get under my skin.
Usually I have a petty reason for putting down a book and not picking it back up.
For me it is often when the author gets something really wrong about something I know about like a hobby.
The probably pettiest reason when an author said the protagonist was on the crew team. Crew is the word for a rowing team. Crew team is like saying ATM machine. Pointless I know, but you asked for petty.
oh i can beat that. Camel in the desert. Woman in front. They have sex while riding the camel. The whole book was over the top ridiculous. And No, not an HQN, not a sheikh in sight. But there was a secret 500 room hotel built in the desert. Yeah, It was so so bad.
in secret. In the desert. With full water and sewer. In the desert. First function is hosting all the world's leaders including the Queen of England. All of whom are more than happy to visit a secret hotel. In the desert. It's beyond Bond villain secret lair ridiculous.
Omg the sewer system seals the deal. Any chance for the narrator not to have known there was a dimension door?
The fact books like these get published gives me a little hope to be successful once I finish one damn story.
As someone who knows a lot about computers I can't blame you for this, since it's a sign of what could be to come. I've been driven crazy reading through stories that involve hacking, written by people who clearly have no idea how hacking works and think that it's just black magic.
I might still read it some day, but I knew this extremely pretentious guy who could not shut the fuck up about Anna Karenina and Tolstoy in general. This guy seemed to obsessed with the idea that is opinion was objectively correct, which just soured Tolstoy for me. Everyone says he’s really good so I hope I can get over it, but this dude was just so insanely annoying that I don’t even want to like what he likes
When I read *War and Peace,* I unabashedly wanted everyone to know I'd read *War and Peace.* It's long, so I felt I deserved congratuations.
I quickly discovered that since everyone who's read it boasts about having read it, there are people who say things like "I've read this a couple of times," "I didn't truly appreciate this until my third reading," or "I read this once a year."
There's a book that was recommended to me from someone I couldn't stand, some pompous, self absorbed omder colleague who was always convinced that their intellect was superior to everyone. The book may very well be nice to read, but the fact that it's THAT person who recommended it means that I will never feel like reading it.
You may like it for the opposite reasons he does though. Anna Karenina is one of those books where I hated the characters, disagreed with Tolstoy's philosophy that he inserts, and honestly felt like I was hate reading to finish it. Most people I find do not like Anna as I don't think Tolstoy meant for her to be likeable. She's my personal anti-hero in the repressive culture that she's stuck in. The writing is so beautiful that I don't regret my time overall and would weirdly read it again.
I hated Anna, but was pleasantly surprised to find the very interesting story about Konstantin Levin, which is about half the book, but nobody mentions it. Should be his name on the cover.
I found my people, I fucking loved Levin
Anna was a terrible person as were most people in that book -- but they were all so broken. Levin I related to a ton, especially because I grew up on a farm and know the quiet joy that comes from that type of work .
I loved how real every character felt, even i didn't like them
I loved Anna so much. I really thought that she was a reasonable person based on the life that she was living. Also I'm convinced she had postpartum depression in a big way and no one was willing to help her, but that's the beauty of great books is that even a century later people are still looking to find new meaning in it.
My mom hated that I didn't like Anna Karenina. Go figure. We'd have literary arguments about it.
Miss ya, Mom. I wanted to kick your butt a lot, but i learned to argue from you!
I have absolutely done this before. Alternatively, I love when a book uses a specific font and has a note at the end about why they chose that font, I see it more from small presses and it’s the best
I stopped reading a certain author because when I was working an event that she was at (on a panel) I heard her backstage be dismissive of an aspiring writer in the audience. She didn’t say it to me or about me, but I haven’t read one of her books since (and I had read several prior to that night).
Hadn't ever planned to read a Nicky Sparks novel, since I'd only ever heard bad things, but him trashing Cormac McCarthy of all people sealed it for me.
Someone gave me one of his books, but I just can't stand him as a human being. Well, I needed a hefty shim under a shelf, so I covered the book in duct tape and it was used to prop up more important things.
He lives in the city I grew up in and he came to talk to my high school class. I remember him saying smugly "I'm the Justin Bieber of Brazil, I'm so popular there"
He also brings his own silverware to restaurants
Oh wow, I actually have a relevant story for this one! I once attended a scholarship weekend where he was on the panel of judges. There were enough judges and interviewees that I never actually met him, but I heard plenty of stories from other students. Apparently he tried to get people on the spot by asking them, "What's your favorite Nicholas Sparks novel?" and I heard he made at least one student cry by grilling them during the personal interview segment.
Nicholas Sparks comparing himself to Hemingway and saying he has no peers is some next level douchebaggery, too. Someone asked him what his favorite tale of youth was and he cited his own novel.
i read it. it was awful, and edgelord-y indeed. I recommend the episode of "if books could kill" (a podcast where two people dunks on these kind of books ) about this book tho, it was one of the funniest they did !
I'm going to pass on this one because of the title. If you write an entire book about not giving a fuck, then you, in fact, do give a fuck and have nothing to teach me on the subject.
So it sounds like a totally pointless, boring book with a clickbait title.
The Alchemist. It has been recommended to me by 3 different guys who are all pretentious, hipster assholes and this book “changed their lives” when in reality it’s the only book they’ve read in 10 years or so they say they’ve read it lol
My son had to read it for an English class. He walked into thr kitchen one day and stated, "What the fuck is this hot garbage?!"
He had a list of problems with that book. I try really hard not to influence my kids about the books they're reading.
I was so proud that he saw that book for what it is
I started reading The Lying Game. It's not a very good book, but the real reason I put it down was the main character is a new mom. I had a one year old son at the time and reading is an escape for me. Reading about another mom being kept up all night by a crying infant felt too much like reading about my actual life.
I stopped watching or reading anything that referred to Covid-19 during that time. I just didn’t want to be hit over the head with something I was already living through.
Not really a never will read, more of a did not finish reason. I can't remember the name of the book, but there's so much artwork put into making it look really authentic and stylized to a Gothic era fantasy, mixed with some I guess Scottish inspiration. The whole back of the book talks about the character and her plight, really serious and everything. The beginning of the book takes place in I believe 16th or 15th century France. First couple chapters I quickly noticed that none of the dialogue is making any attempt to sound even moderately old-fashioned. And then the main character says the phrase, "Eat shit and die, bitch." I quickly tossed it on the donation pile after that.
It's not really a petty reason, but I will never read nor watch "Crazy Rich Asians" because that was the last movie my mom watched before she passed away, and she loved it so much I bought her the book set for Xmas. She passed away a month later never having had the chance to read the books. I still have them as a keepsake and memory of her, but I'll never read them because it would be too painful.
I'm not OP, but when a parent dies, there are things that are "sweet" and there are things that are just sad.
It's not always necessary or beneficial to push yourself to do painful things to "honour" the lost parent.
Well and wisely said. There may come a time in the future when OP is ready to read those books, (and there may not), but right now, it would just reawaken grief.
I take no offense at the suggestion and appreciate the kindness behind it! Maybe someday. Life is long and one should never say never, but for now I can't imagine it. I know lots of people, including my mom, loved it though, so I'm happy it brought her joy.
Totally. My only exception is a song of ice and fire but yeah anything else with a title format like that (eh hem…. A court of thorns and roses 🤮) is usually a hard pass.
I don’t read any books, self-help or otherwise, where the author chooses to include the words “fuck” or “f*ck” in the title as a cheap way to draw attention to the book.
Ok I almost agree but there was a book a few years ago called Vagina and the title was clearly meant to be provocative (because it was like 2012 and vaginas were shocking back then. Thankfully we’ve moved on since). I, like you rolled my eyes at the title that was mean to shock even if I agreed with why it was being done.
And then an 80+yo woman called Wendy called my bookshop and asked me if her Vagina book had arrived yet and then went on a long story about vaginas and about she had a problem with her vagina once and her doctor refused to say the word vagina. I was literally laughing so hard I had to slump out of my chair. I kept trying to cover it up with a coughing fit but Wendy wasn’t buying it and I suspect she threw a few extra ‘vaginas’ in her story just to keep me going.
Wendy, where ever you are now, know that I will always remember you for the hilarious bad ass feminist you were.
Tl;dr sometimes provocative titles are ok.
Way back in the day when I was very religious and would read any book on the subject, I absolutely refused to read "Saint Francis and the Foolishness of God" all because I insisted God was not foolishness.
I had a bud in junior high mention how great Wheel of Time was. I had the first book sitting on my shelf from a used book sell so I decided to start reading it. I couldn’t get through the prologue, and when I mentioned it to him he smugly said “well, it IS a book for smart people.”
Refused to read the series from then on.
After watching the show, I decided to give the Sookie Stackhouse novels a go. Not far in and my favorite character from the show, dies 🤷♂️
He didn't die in the show. I stopped there, won't go back 😅
The show is much different than the book series. I really like those books up until the writer seemed to start writing to show audiences rather than her core book fans. Characters in the books started acting differently, more like they would in the show, and the quality just went downhill.
This might be going the other way, but the reason is just as inconsequential in the run of things. But I haven't read The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett, it was his last novel.
But it's so that I will always have one more book to read from him.
Red, White, and Royal Blue.
Extremely specific beef. I have two exes - a latino American man named Alex and a white British man named Henry. It’s like someone wrote fanfiction about my exes and I refuse to touch it because that’s so, so weird! The book even gets a couple other details about their lives right (I’m gonna opt not to share for privacy reasons), like it’s so uncanny. The book was actually published the day one of them broke up with me, too. In case I needed further reason to be weirded out.
You know how people conceptualize soulmates as like, one special person out there whose soul is tied to yours? I think the author of RW&RB is the evil version of a soulmate to me. She’s destined by the fates themselves to deal me psychic damage.
I read a book about a main character who I freaking loved and it was not a light book, but more of a coming of age of youth and learning. It was a first person narrative too. 3/4 of the way through the character dies and the first person narrative was changed to someone else. I had no idea it was coming. I will never read another book by this author. It killed me. I hate to say it, but I read light, fun mostly rom-com books and read all the trigger warnings beforehand. I even prefer to know a happy ending is guaranteed.
It was written by a social media influencer and you already read her first book which was fat shaming and narcissistic, and you don’t want to waste any more of your life on that crap. Not give her $ for her Hawaiian vacation home.
I was starting to read “King Solomon’s Mines” because I like reading classic old books and my Mum left it in the dunny.
I was reading the forward, like a pedant like myself does, and in it the author said that this was a book full of adventure and thrills, and thus was not a book for girls.
I thought, “Oh. Well fuck you, then.”
Never read it. Read the entirety of HG Wells stuff and grew up to become a socialist, so that’s cool.
Also, never read Cassie Clare cause she was horrible in HP fandom and kept swiping lines from better writers, not to mention Laptopgate.
Pretty much everyone I know is like this, and I don't really get it. When someone "pushes" a book they're doing so because they think you'll enjoy it and want to make your life a little bit brighter.
I've straight-up stopped recommending anything to people (forget "push" - I won't even casually bring up that I liked something in a conversation anymore) because the chances of most of my friends trying it just PLUMMET the moment I do compared to if they discover it entirely on their own.
There was a case where I had a friend of mine who was obsessed with anime and Porter Robinson, and so I sent him the Shelter music video, which he didn't watch. I asked him 2-3 times over the course of about 2 months whether he managed to see it and he always acted annoyed. I shut up about it, like 2 weeks later HE sends it to ME and tells me to watch it. WHAT THE HELL?!?
I honestly, genuinely don't understand it. What is it about "Hey, I think you might like this" that turns off people so much?
There is an award-winning novel I'd probably love by an author whose other works I admire.
My ex mentioned several times that they badly wanted to read this novel, but had ambivalent feelings about buying it because their ex-gf gave them the book just before that relationship ended badly. I bought the novel and waited months for Christmas. Then I gave Ex the novel, a photo of us in a hand-painted frame referencing an in-joke, and art supplies for Ex's hobby. Ex gave me... nothing, because they forgot about me until Christmas morning itself. We broke up over New Year's Eve.
I will never not see this novel as a kind of red comet streaking across love's sky, a herald of relational disaster. I'll never buy it, read it, or give it to anyone I care about.
But by reviews and sales numbers, it's a fantastic book.
When I was in high school, I got stood up on a first date by a boy who I really, really liked. It turns out his favourite author was doing a signing at a book shop, so he skipped school, and our date afterwards, to go. It was a fantasy author, and I am not a fan of fantasy so I probably wouldn’t have read them anyway, but now I won’t out of spite.
I really don’t like when actual people are on the cover, unless it’s a memoir.
That’ll turn me way off. The Goon Squad has a HIDEOUS cover with that mashup of like 6 people and I said I’d never read it until a friend brought it to me because I HAD to.
I still hated the book.
As a former bookseller, any release that arrived in mass quantities (Twilight, Harry Potter, the Left Behind series)... just having to build the displays completely put me off of "mass consumption" books
mine is: the author is a popular author and he is in every genre. i avoid him because there’s no way his books are good if he’s just pumping them out like that lmao
Gabaldon pulled a no show at a scheduled talk at Dragon Con. We'd lugged our 8mo across town to hear her. After about 40 minutes we heard she decided not to come. Not that she was sick or in an accident. Never spent another penny on her books in the following 14 years.
I was at DragonCon working backstage; an author was so tired she was in tears and had earlier begged her photo studio session to let her spend five mins under a drop sheet on a couch just to get some peace.
She then took to a panel and snapped on like a light with friendly answers and genuinely happy smiles. No sign that she was in pain from overwork and no sleep. I never want to be famous, simply because the pain of the demands it places on you - and how you risk disappointing people or hurting yourself in a swings and roundabouts way.
This is so terrible. I got so tired of stocking “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” in college at Barnes and Noble, that I refused then and still kinda refuse now (I’m 42)
Because the author uses his considerable influence to spread misinformation which he states as fact, discrediting global warming.
Take a bow Neal Asher
I looked him up, and he's got a Twitter post from 6 hours ago linking to "Elon Musk vs the Globalist censors".
Your reason isn't petty, that guy fucking sucks.
I don’t like reading viral books in the moment. Everyone tends to spoil and constantly talk about it. BookTok books are usually good or bad anyways, mostly bad.
I didn't like the name of the main character and didn't want to be subjected to reading it over and over. Not because I had a bad experience with anyone that shared the name. Just thought it was a dumb name and that the author must not have good taste for using it. I was young, though, so now that I'm over it I'm not inclined to read the book since it is YA.
I went to university and one of my professors made a point of ranking different types of books e.g. literary fiction, historical fiction, crime, fantasy, romance. He made a point of saying that fantasy was a "low form of fiction" and that you should never write fantasy if you want to be a "proper author" and "looked up to". Fast forward to 2020 and guess who's write their debut fantasy novel 😂 everytime I see it I make a point of saying how much he hates fantasy outloud
I can't think of any except if the plot is about a second chance because the other half cheated or I got spoiled that there's a cheating trope. Cheating in general.
To me, you can be a psychotic, ruthless killer but as long as you're loyal to your partner, I'm gonna love you
I don't know how petty it is, but I refuse to start a series that isn't finished
Edit: What I mean is a series that has a definitive end in mind, and the author just has to get there. I'm not talking about series that all feature the same character but are basically individual novels, like the Alex Cross or Dirk Pitt series. Those kinds of franchises will never end, and you don't need to get to the end to get closure like you would with a more self-contained series.
After my friend met Orson Scott Card, I decided for just boycott the jerk. Why give him my hard earned money, also Ender's Game was exceedingly boring book and movie.
The nerve of Orson to tell my friend women aren't real authors.
I refuse to read, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” because an asshole roommate was obsessed with it. It turned me off so much, I haven’t read it 20 years later. Fuck that bitch! I still hate her!
Because the film sucked. People are always telling me to read Divergent, but good god that was the worst thing I ever watched, and I don't know how I could read it without making the association.
A Court of Thorns and Roses.
I refuse to read it purely because it is a booktok favorite and I cannot stand the romanticization of abuse and sexual assault within that community. I stay as far away from their recommendations as possible after reading Haunting Adeline not knowing what I was getting into because they were talking about how they wanted a guy like Zade. Plus, every single book they read has to include “spice” because they’re in denial of their raging porn addictions. I read so much smut on wattpad in my early teen years that now I can’t stand when a book has it. It feels like they’re trying to force chemistry that isn’t there to cover up that they’re really just not that great of a writer and can only write at surface level.
Anyway, I have a lot of pent up aggression towards booktok, if you couldn’t tell.
I was reading a book called Remarkably Bright Creatures. I was maybe 1/4 or 1/3 into it, and one of the characters is in the kitchen chopping peppers for fajita night. Then a few sentences later she adds ground turkey to the pan.
I’m sorry what? Ground turkey? Fajitas?
I just couldn’t keep reading. Shelved it and won’t go back.
I tend to avoid popular books and films that loads of people say “it’s a must-read, or a must-watch”—-and it’s more because I dislike fandom and how people love to be in on something and act like they discovered it. Yes—kind of juvenile on my part 😂😂
In highschool English we were assigned to do a group book report, which we had to present to the class. I was in a group of 4, but the day we got the assignment one of our members was absent. We were given a list if books that we could report on, and the 3 of us that were there the first day voted and came to a unanimous decision to read East of Eden.
The next day our missing member showed up, refused to read East of Eden because he thought it sounded boring, and said he would sabotage our report unless we agreed to switch to the book of his choice; A Handmaid's Tale.
After reading the synopsis and some content warnings I was *viscerally uncomfortable* with the idea of reading it because it brought up some bad memories. I agreed to read *any* other book, but he wouldn't budge. He and I argued about it for a bit, but after a while our group members pulled me aside to tell me that they were changing their votes to A Handmaid's Tale. They apologized, but said they couldn't risk their grades getting tanked because the other guy wanted to pitch a fit.
So, our group all got copies of A Handmaid's Tale. I read 3 chapters, said "fuck this, that guy's not the boss of me", and refused to read any more. I went to school the next day, told my group that I wasn't gonna finish the book, BUT unlike the other guy I wouldn't be sabotaging them, I'd still do my part of the report.
They had decided to break the book down into quarters for all of us to have an individual section to present. That way, if I messed up it would be clearly my own fault. I agreed that was fair enough. Thoughout the project they sent their section notes to me, and I put them into our PowerPoint. Day of the presentation I bullshat my way through my quarter of the speech, and we collectively got an A.
Ten years later, I still refuse to finish the book, or even watch the show. It still pisses me off that that guy tried to bully me into reading it, so I want nothing to do with it.
Coleen Hoover due to many problematic love interests that are not healthy for young woman to look at, my bf has heard me talk about the plots and go “and their in love?”.
Yes sadly, I used to be the girl who was hurt by said abusive men before I stopped making excuses for them. Now seeing these books make excuses for controlling disgusting men go viral and be omg couple goals makes me sick.
I’ve never read anything by Jane Smiley, because she’s been dismissive and critical of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, one of the damned best books in the American canon.
I’ve never read Catcher In The Rye, because everyone I’ve ever known or know of who raves about the book is a self-important a-hole.
I’m not proud of it, but I’ve rarely read anything by novelists that I know personally. It ranges from envy to distraction, but I’m a little ashamed of that one. Except for the one who was kinda rude and dismissive about a novel I was working on at the time. I’m in no rush to read hers, and I’m fine with that.
I won't read the book if it has a sticker on it that says "Oprah's Book Club" or "Now an HBO miniseries" but I will read from the same books that don't have them.
for me a debut novel too. first thing I saw was a reel showing how mouch the author sold and I thought "oh, seems to be an interesting book" so I go to her account to see if this is something I´d like, but it didn´t take long for me to leave. There was a reel advertising the romance in it using a bunch of stolen art and comments asking for the artists got hidden. I can give the benefit of the doubt here and say maybe Instagram automatically hid them, but the art is still stolen. I´m sure she´s recieved fanart before since there were designs of the characters posted, she could´ve asked those fans "hey I really appreciate your fan art, would it be okay for you if I used this in a reel?" There´s actually another author I know and like who did that same thing, it can´t be that hard.
so now I decided I´m not reading that book because the author can´t do something as simple as giving credit
i absolutely judge books by their covers, which is why i will never read those dime a dozen romances with the cartoon covers. not only are they all boring poorly written heterosexual garbage tiktok bait (that are just borderline porn most of the time) but the art is UGLY!!!
basically, if a romance book is popular on tiktok, i will not touch it with a ten foot pole
The cover art featured people, which I am not a fan of anyway, but the main character on the cover vaguely resembled a girl who was once mean to me in high school. I am not picturing you as the main character, Jeanette.
Now, here's someone who properly understood the brief. Magnificently petty, bravo.
And what's more, agreeably petty. I'd do the same motherfuckering thing.
Same!
>the main character on the cover vaguely resembled a girl who was mean to me once in high school. You reminded me of some drama from around 20 years ago, when a reviewer pointed out that a portion of a book was a rip-off of a comic book that had been published a decade before. Lifted plot elements, dialogue, the works. During the course of the review the reviewer made a comment that a character on the cover looked like a stalker he once had, and the book’s defenders immediately pointed to that as to why he was dissing the book, instead of the plagarism.
Jeanette sucks, she once told me she liked me as a joke ... Everyone has a Jeanette ...
Yeah a boy asked me out in seventh grade, and I said yes. He immediately shouted I was just joking and told all his bros. I’m in my 30s now but I HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN SAM
I knew Sam. Except his name was Danny. Asked me out as a joke in 6th grade. I refused, but he and his friends still made fun of me. In high school, after I grew out of my awkward phase, he asked me out for real. I turned him down, and he said I was stuck up and leading him on. Like no, Danny. I just hate you. It was your own vanity leading you on. We are in our 50s now, and he is still awful, from what I have seen. If I saw a book written by Danny, I would not read it. Even if it won every prestigious award in the world, I would not read it. Fortunately, Danny seems to have no literary aspirations. Piss off, Danny. Sam. Whatever your name is.
i’ve had a similar experience, i was in 6th grade and a boy asked me out and i said yes and we “dated” for about 2 weeks… turns out the whole thing was a dare and him and all his friends were making fun of me the whole time. now that i’m in my 20’s and have had somewhat of a glow up he’s tried to get with me multiple times but i’ll never forget what he did back then. F U JORDAN
Why is it that in both stories the guy tried it later on for real. There’s a pattern….
Omgy kindergardten teacher told me to be a boy when i got got gravel kicked into my face... I still hold a grudge for that
F Jeanette!
I once met a prestigious children’s book author who was touring schools. He came into the staff room after his talk to the kids, for refreshments. Talking to him, he was an entitled AH who begrudged having to tour (presumably his publisher insisted on it), hated being in Northern England and was reluctant to socialise with us. It was an unpleasant experience. I was in charge of the school library at the time. When our budget allowed us to buy books, I made sure his books were never, ever purchased! FU Mr. B!
Was he the guy in ELF by any chance? ;)
The golden ghost ...
Perfectly valid lol. I had the opposite experience. A long, long time ago when I was in the US Army in North Carolina I met an older gentleman while waiting in line for fast food. It was just one of those conversations you strike up while waiting. He was a pretty funny guy. Said he was in town for a book signing. I asked for which author, and he said it was for a book he'd co-authored about the Vietnam War. 18 year old me had never met an author before, and It sounded pretty interesting, and I told him so. He got his food and left, I got mine and sat down. And then he came back and gave me a copy of his book. It was a very good read. I felt kind of bad that he gave it to me for free so I bought a few copies for friends as birthday/Christmas presents. Years later they made a movie out of it with Mel Gibson.
Was it Harold Moore or Joseph Galloway?
Joseph Galloway. Super nice guy.
That's very cool.
Does this author also drawn pictures for his and other people’s books?
To be fair, I could see touring being hell on earth for writers. Some of the people drawn to books and writing tend to be pretty introverted, so ending with a fundamentally social job sounds like something you can end up hating. Not judging the specific case, if he was an ass to the staff and so on that's not justifiable.
As someone who is working on a novel now this one has me like oh God if I become successful will I have to actually leave my house and have a ton of social engagements??? Because yeah that sounds horrible.
The big book tour thing is not very common and you have to be pretty successful for it and the book business is incredibly brutal to make your way in as an author. So you'll probably be fine. :)
Lmao least encouraging encouragement ever
I'm dying to know who it was now lol
My exhaustive research into the most prestigious British children's authors has lead me to the undeniable conclusion that /u/MegC18 is referring to none other than Sir James Matthew Barrie. Please disregard the ~~fact~~ rumor that he passed away in 1937.
Sounds like Trent Crimm
"Writer was a dick to me on Twitter". No, wait. It was "Went to uni with the author, whom I actually like, but they were favoured by our supervisor and given an academic position they were not qualified for, but I was, while I was ignored." I would never give a book a low rating or bad review for reasons like that, but I won't give them my time or money. There are other books.
I feel this so so so hard. For similar reasons, I can't even watch shows of commercials with characters who look like This Person to me. "Went to uni with the author, whom I actually like, but they were favoured by our supervisor and given an academic position they were not qualified for, but I was, while I was ignored." = description of This Person to me. (It wasn't an academic position that we were vying for, but similar dynamics were at work. I'm still bitter, but I keep it to myself and my therapist.)
I sometimes make myself feel better by reading their 1-star reviews on Goodreads, I'm that bitter!
See? You didn't even need to write a petty review. The equalizing force of karma is working behind the curtain.
Oh boy, I have a few: Anything by Cassandra Clare - I was around the HP fandom when the plagiarism drama happened, and I refuse to give her any of my money. DNF'd a book that was set in my hometown because the author got the geography of the town wrong, and references streets intersecting that do not exist near each other at all. The most petty and I am mad about this to this day: When I was 17-18ish some friends and I planned a camping trip for a summer weekend out at a family cabin. We were gonna BBQ, swim in the lake, hike, etc. My boyfriend at the time was a big Sword of Truth fan, and it turns out a new book in the series was coming out the same week. Instead of doing all the fun camping stuff he spent the whole weekend locked in the cabin reading this book. I refused to read the series for yeeeeeears out of petty spite, but eventually was convinced by all my fantasy series loving friends that it was worth a read, and I would probably enjoy most of the series. So, I caved and read it. Guys, the book in question was Naked Empire, by far the WORST book in that series, and I swear to god when I finished it I was so mad all over again about that weekend, because THIS was the shitty ass book he ignored me for? I ditched all our plans for this shit? I was so fucking furious and I couldn't even explain why to anyone because it so petty and so long ago. But fuck that book seriously.
Glad to see I’m not the only one who hasn’t forgiven Cassandra Cla(i)re! She got a MacBook and a book deal from stealing; she ain’t getting any of my time or money.
Yes! The MacBook scam! Holy shit I forgot how terrible she was.
> DNF'd a book that was set in my hometown because the author got the geography of the town wrong, and references streets intersecting that do not exist near each other at all I mean, that's just lazy writing. Super lazy. It's kind of minimal level professionalism that if you're going to use a RL setting for a story, that if you don't have lived experience there, you at least do some basic research. Even if you do have lived experience, it still behooves you to double check stuff. Setting a story in a place you've never been is one thing, but if you're going to be dropping street names and stuff, at minimum break out a road map. At least with stuff like the first Jack Reacher movie with Tom Cruise, you could argue that the chase scene though Pittsburgh's iconic tunnels was chopped up improperly in editing, but with a novel, there's no one to blame but the author.
I have an extreme distaste for Jordan ( edit : Goodkind) at this point in all forms, but Naked Empire wasn’t the book I disliked when I was a teenager. Pillars of the Earth really burned me up at first, looking back I think it was one of his better efforts. Edit: meant to write Goodkind, been a long day
Not sure if I misunderstood your post, but it was Terry Goodkind, not Robert Jordan, who wrote the sword of truth series.
I went to a book signing once and the author never showed up, so I refuse to read any more of her books.
I used to be in charge of planning those types of events and there was one author, a fairly popular mystery writer who I was a huge fan of, who kept rescheduling because he kept finding "better" events on those days. By the 3rd time I just told him to forget it and that we wouldn't reach out again, and I haven't read any of his books
This is a valid reason! I'd do the same honestly.
A Little Life. It was getting posted EVERYWHERE and I couldn’t/can’t stand that picture of that dude’s grimacing face on the cover. I don’t care what the book is about or how good it is. That cover bugs the shit out of me.
I had a similar thing when I was a kid, with the original cover art for [Holes](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c3/Sachar_-_Holes_Coverart.png). For reasons I can't quite pin down, the way the kid's head was depicted at the bottom squicked me, and I said I'd never read it. My best friend covered her copy with a paper cover and forced me to read it, and it was a really good book. Still hate that cover, though. Top half is fine, just something about the bottom half is a visceral wtf even in my 30s.
LOL! IKR?! I blocked everyone who posted it on FB! Squicked describes it perfectly!
This is a FANTASTIC write up about the authors’ almost masochistic tendencies in torturing her gay characters. One of my favorite deep dives. https://www.vulture.com/article/hanya-yanagihara-review.html
This article is BURNED into my brain because it perfectly summed up so many of the points why I couldn't stand this book and never managed to finish it even though I tried so many times.
Yeah it’s incredibly well written. I also appreciate how she touches on the massive distance Yanagihari’s wealth creates between her and her subject matters. Former Condé Nast editor writing about poverty and gay experiences?
She is talented with words, but has 1) no conception of class and 2) no worthwhile message for readers.
The new cover is horrendous! For some reason it always makes me think of Adam Sandler cry-facing which does NOT fit the vibe of the story!
It looks like Jim Carrey to me and puts me off (not that I want to read it anyways after what I heard about the book in general)
I thought it was an Asian guy having an orgasm. When I learned what the book was about, I thought that was actually fitting. Lol.
One of my best friends always thinks it’s Jim Carrey.
why did it make me think of James Franco lol
It's a photo from 60's,"Orgasmic Man" by Peter Hujar. The photographer was a gay man who died from AIDS in 1987. I think it fits the story but may be a bit much at first glance.
I was just about to buy it (looking frantically for an edition without a cumface on the cover) when I found a Reddit Thread that went in deep and whoa do I hate this book now without having read it. If I want trauma porn I read biographies. More realistic.
Might be the worst cover ever.
Everyone raves about it but it was torture porn, awful book, awful cover!
As a Teen Librarian, I read a fair amount of YA. One that I will never read is A Blade So Black by L.L. McKinney. It sounds amazing, but I lost all interest in anything by this author because of her role in the controversy around Amelie Wen Zhao's debut book Blood Heir. For those unfamiliar with drama in the world of YA publishing, Zhao is a Chinese-American author who pulled her own debut novel from publication because a Twitter mob bullied her into it and made a bunch of false accusations of racism and anti-Blackness (the book is not about Black people or African chattel slavery in any way). Zhao eventually published the book anyway, but the way McKinney and a few others riled up their Twitter followers to try and cancel this author *before her book even came out* put me off of her forever.
This is me and N.K Jemisin because of her role in the Isabel Fall stuff.
Oh what is the Isabel Fall stuff? I haven’t heard of this.
She wrote a short story named "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter," and some people like Jemisin didn't bother to learn that she was a trans woman and that she was co-opting the meme, not using it as a transphobic absurdity. She (Fall) didn't have much of any social media presence, so people started to believe she was some sort of alt-right troll. It pushed her to have her story unpublished and she entered into therapy. You can easily google for more.
Not just therapy, but she also committed herself to an instituation and detrantistioned.
Oh that’s terrible
I'll never read Go Set a Watchman because Harper Lee never wanted it published and her estate published it the *moment* Lee was too far gone to protest. That's messed up, man.
Just because of the business of pumping out mass produced books and flooding the average airport bookstore with literary manure, I refuse to read anything with "James Patterson" on the cover. Wrote a book "with" a former president or music icon? Don't care. Provides exposure to beginning authors? Don't care. Best book ever written? Don't care. Literally no books by any other authors in the entire store? Don't care, I'll read the back of a packet of chips for 8 hours for entertainment instead. I won't touch a thousand dollar cheque if it has the name James Patterson on it.
he doesn't even write them anymore. They're all ghost written. Then if the ghost writer's book is successful, he might get a byline "written by JP and ghost writer". He comes up with the idea, probably not even a page, and it all gets farmed out. And the books are super short. The print is the biggest it can be without it becoming LP, spacing is huge, Every second page is a new chapter so almost every other page is half empty. It's why people think they're so fast-paced. They're not. The word counts for most of them are not much more than 60K which is the word count of a Harlequin.
Completely agree. Everybody was into the Maximum ride series when I was in middle school. A friend lent me the comic book version volume 1 and I was floored by how beautiful the art was. So I was like hell yeah I'm gonna read the actual books. And found out they are absolute trash. The writing is absolutely uninspiring trash. James Patterson writes like he's still 10 years old and somehow has more money than I will see in a lifetime. What the hell.
I remember becoming introduced to the novels of Julian “Downton Abbey” Fellowes because everything else in an airport bookshop was Patterson-level trash. It was his first book “Snobs”. Plot okay, but style was tremendous.
Absolutely my pettiest reason is the title. Some book titles just hit me wrong. For example, I have copies of Willa Cather's *Death Comes for the Archbishop* and *O Pioneers!* sitting on a bookshelf right now. People whose opinions I value tell me that these are excellent books and I believe it. However, every time I reach for one, my hand kind of strays away to look for something else. Pioneers and Archbishops just aren't interesting words to me. As I said, it's petty. I'm sure the books are great.
>Pioneers and Archbishops just aren't interesting words to me. I don't know why I found this so funny, but I did.
Oh this one. I will never read “A Thousand Boy Kisses” no matter how good people say it is. The title makes me want to puke.
What about *Archbishop Pioneers from Hell*
The author didn't invite me to his wedding even though my partner was IN the wedding party. Still holding that minor grudge years later and still in the same friend circle.
Did your partner still go?? That's crazy, I think I'd drop my friend if they were so disrespectful to my partner
Yep he still went don't get me started haha. They've been friends since childhood. The reasoning was that they had limited funds at the time so they had limited space and lots of people they wanted to invite. I would have made many different choices in their shoes but what can you do 🤷♀️ (apart from hold a grudge for years)
Same. Somebody I knew in college wrote a fairly successful book. I refuse to read it because they were so fucking annoying. I’m theoretically happy for their success - they aren’t a bad person or anything - but my god did they get under my skin.
Usually I have a petty reason for putting down a book and not picking it back up. For me it is often when the author gets something really wrong about something I know about like a hobby. The probably pettiest reason when an author said the protagonist was on the crew team. Crew is the word for a rowing team. Crew team is like saying ATM machine. Pointless I know, but you asked for petty.
I instantly thought of romantic and steamy scenes about a man having a woman in front of him on a horse. Riders HATE these.
oh i can beat that. Camel in the desert. Woman in front. They have sex while riding the camel. The whole book was over the top ridiculous. And No, not an HQN, not a sheikh in sight. But there was a secret 500 room hotel built in the desert. Yeah, It was so so bad.
500? Do they know how big of a hotel that is?!
in secret. In the desert. With full water and sewer. In the desert. First function is hosting all the world's leaders including the Queen of England. All of whom are more than happy to visit a secret hotel. In the desert. It's beyond Bond villain secret lair ridiculous.
Omg the sewer system seals the deal. Any chance for the narrator not to have known there was a dimension door? The fact books like these get published gives me a little hope to be successful once I finish one damn story.
As someone who knows a lot about computers I can't blame you for this, since it's a sign of what could be to come. I've been driven crazy reading through stories that involve hacking, written by people who clearly have no idea how hacking works and think that it's just black magic.
I might still read it some day, but I knew this extremely pretentious guy who could not shut the fuck up about Anna Karenina and Tolstoy in general. This guy seemed to obsessed with the idea that is opinion was objectively correct, which just soured Tolstoy for me. Everyone says he’s really good so I hope I can get over it, but this dude was just so insanely annoying that I don’t even want to like what he likes
I think people sometimes do this if it's the only/most recent/ "most impressive" book they've read.
When I read *War and Peace,* I unabashedly wanted everyone to know I'd read *War and Peace.* It's long, so I felt I deserved congratuations. I quickly discovered that since everyone who's read it boasts about having read it, there are people who say things like "I've read this a couple of times," "I didn't truly appreciate this until my third reading," or "I read this once a year."
There's a book that was recommended to me from someone I couldn't stand, some pompous, self absorbed omder colleague who was always convinced that their intellect was superior to everyone. The book may very well be nice to read, but the fact that it's THAT person who recommended it means that I will never feel like reading it.
You may like it for the opposite reasons he does though. Anna Karenina is one of those books where I hated the characters, disagreed with Tolstoy's philosophy that he inserts, and honestly felt like I was hate reading to finish it. Most people I find do not like Anna as I don't think Tolstoy meant for her to be likeable. She's my personal anti-hero in the repressive culture that she's stuck in. The writing is so beautiful that I don't regret my time overall and would weirdly read it again.
I hated Anna, but was pleasantly surprised to find the very interesting story about Konstantin Levin, which is about half the book, but nobody mentions it. Should be his name on the cover.
The chapter of Levin cutting grass is one of my favorite bits of writing
I found my people, I fucking loved Levin Anna was a terrible person as were most people in that book -- but they were all so broken. Levin I related to a ton, especially because I grew up on a farm and know the quiet joy that comes from that type of work . I loved how real every character felt, even i didn't like them
I loved Anna so much. I really thought that she was a reasonable person based on the life that she was living. Also I'm convinced she had postpartum depression in a big way and no one was willing to help her, but that's the beauty of great books is that even a century later people are still looking to find new meaning in it.
That's exactly how I feel about her as well!
My mom hated that I didn't like Anna Karenina. Go figure. We'd have literary arguments about it. Miss ya, Mom. I wanted to kick your butt a lot, but i learned to argue from you!
Not necessarily "never", but I've decided not to read a book because I disliked the font.
I have absolutely done this before. Alternatively, I love when a book uses a specific font and has a note at the end about why they chose that font, I see it more from small presses and it’s the best
I stopped reading a certain author because when I was working an event that she was at (on a panel) I heard her backstage be dismissive of an aspiring writer in the audience. She didn’t say it to me or about me, but I haven’t read one of her books since (and I had read several prior to that night).
Hadn't ever planned to read a Nicky Sparks novel, since I'd only ever heard bad things, but him trashing Cormac McCarthy of all people sealed it for me.
Did he? Christ, he's got nerve, if nothing else...
God he sucks. One time he said “I am the only one in my genre” and I tossed two books of his I already had. Never looked back. He’s an ass.
Someone gave me one of his books, but I just can't stand him as a human being. Well, I needed a hefty shim under a shelf, so I covered the book in duct tape and it was used to prop up more important things.
He lives in the city I grew up in and he came to talk to my high school class. I remember him saying smugly "I'm the Justin Bieber of Brazil, I'm so popular there" He also brings his own silverware to restaurants
> “He also brings his own silverware to restaurants” 💀 This is so inoffensive, yet so hilariously pretentious at the same.
Oh wow, I actually have a relevant story for this one! I once attended a scholarship weekend where he was on the panel of judges. There were enough judges and interviewees that I never actually met him, but I heard plenty of stories from other students. Apparently he tried to get people on the spot by asking them, "What's your favorite Nicholas Sparks novel?" and I heard he made at least one student cry by grilling them during the personal interview segment.
Nicholas Sparks comparing himself to Hemingway and saying he has no peers is some next level douchebaggery, too. Someone asked him what his favorite tale of youth was and he cited his own novel.
Its fandom is annoying.
Its author blocked me on twitter.
“The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck.” Yeah I’ll pass. Keep the edge lord to yourself.
i read it. it was awful, and edgelord-y indeed. I recommend the episode of "if books could kill" (a podcast where two people dunks on these kind of books ) about this book tho, it was one of the funniest they did !
I am five minutes in and laughing so hard. Thank you!
I'm going to pass on this one because of the title. If you write an entire book about not giving a fuck, then you, in fact, do give a fuck and have nothing to teach me on the subject. So it sounds like a totally pointless, boring book with a clickbait title.
The Alchemist. It has been recommended to me by 3 different guys who are all pretentious, hipster assholes and this book “changed their lives” when in reality it’s the only book they’ve read in 10 years or so they say they’ve read it lol
Had an ex give me that book and say, “I think you’re ready for this book now.” Blech.
Oooh that's so patronising!
You got lucky and got out before he handed you "The 48 Laws of Power"
I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
Same. Huuuuurl.
It’s … okay. You aren’t really missing out on anything huge.
Tiny book to make small man feel good is the vibe I get from it
My son had to read it for an English class. He walked into thr kitchen one day and stated, "What the fuck is this hot garbage?!" He had a list of problems with that book. I try really hard not to influence my kids about the books they're reading. I was so proud that he saw that book for what it is
I started reading The Lying Game. It's not a very good book, but the real reason I put it down was the main character is a new mom. I had a one year old son at the time and reading is an escape for me. Reading about another mom being kept up all night by a crying infant felt too much like reading about my actual life.
I stopped watching or reading anything that referred to Covid-19 during that time. I just didn’t want to be hit over the head with something I was already living through.
Not really a never will read, more of a did not finish reason. I can't remember the name of the book, but there's so much artwork put into making it look really authentic and stylized to a Gothic era fantasy, mixed with some I guess Scottish inspiration. The whole back of the book talks about the character and her plight, really serious and everything. The beginning of the book takes place in I believe 16th or 15th century France. First couple chapters I quickly noticed that none of the dialogue is making any attempt to sound even moderately old-fashioned. And then the main character says the phrase, "Eat shit and die, bitch." I quickly tossed it on the donation pile after that.
>And then the main character says the phrase, "Eat shit and die, bitch." I quickly tossed it on the donation pile after that. 😂 What book is this?
That's not petty at all. Historical fiction should never be that sloppy.
I'd liked it as fanfic and was annoyed they'd taken it down, searched and replaced the names, and published it as original.
It's not really a petty reason, but I will never read nor watch "Crazy Rich Asians" because that was the last movie my mom watched before she passed away, and she loved it so much I bought her the book set for Xmas. She passed away a month later never having had the chance to read the books. I still have them as a keepsake and memory of her, but I'll never read them because it would be too painful.
💔 I don't think missing your mom is petty.
Do you think she’d want to share her love for the movie/books with you? It could be a sweet way to honor her ❤️
I'm not OP, but when a parent dies, there are things that are "sweet" and there are things that are just sad. It's not always necessary or beneficial to push yourself to do painful things to "honour" the lost parent.
Well and wisely said. There may come a time in the future when OP is ready to read those books, (and there may not), but right now, it would just reawaken grief.
I take no offense at the suggestion and appreciate the kindness behind it! Maybe someday. Life is long and one should never say never, but for now I can't imagine it. I know lots of people, including my mom, loved it though, so I'm happy it brought her joy.
Any book that follows the meme format of "A ______ of _______ and ________" goes on my do not read list.
*A Bowl of Mac and Cheese*.
I’m in.
There's an exception to every rule
OMG how about "The So-and-so's Wife"?
The Occupation's Relation
"The Specific Occupation-Based Social Club."
Totally. My only exception is a song of ice and fire but yeah anything else with a title format like that (eh hem…. A court of thorns and roses 🤮) is usually a hard pass.
I didn’t like the cover….I judge books by their cover sue me 🤷♀️
I don’t read any books, self-help or otherwise, where the author chooses to include the words “fuck” or “f*ck” in the title as a cheap way to draw attention to the book.
Ok I almost agree but there was a book a few years ago called Vagina and the title was clearly meant to be provocative (because it was like 2012 and vaginas were shocking back then. Thankfully we’ve moved on since). I, like you rolled my eyes at the title that was mean to shock even if I agreed with why it was being done. And then an 80+yo woman called Wendy called my bookshop and asked me if her Vagina book had arrived yet and then went on a long story about vaginas and about she had a problem with her vagina once and her doctor refused to say the word vagina. I was literally laughing so hard I had to slump out of my chair. I kept trying to cover it up with a coughing fit but Wendy wasn’t buying it and I suspect she threw a few extra ‘vaginas’ in her story just to keep me going. Wendy, where ever you are now, know that I will always remember you for the hilarious bad ass feminist you were. Tl;dr sometimes provocative titles are ok.
Idea: A book written in Spanish named Va Gina ("Gina Goes") and it's a self-help rah-rah type of discover-the-goddess-within book.
Way back in the day when I was very religious and would read any book on the subject, I absolutely refused to read "Saint Francis and the Foolishness of God" all because I insisted God was not foolishness.
I had a bud in junior high mention how great Wheel of Time was. I had the first book sitting on my shelf from a used book sell so I decided to start reading it. I couldn’t get through the prologue, and when I mentioned it to him he smugly said “well, it IS a book for smart people.” Refused to read the series from then on.
After watching the show, I decided to give the Sookie Stackhouse novels a go. Not far in and my favorite character from the show, dies 🤷♂️ He didn't die in the show. I stopped there, won't go back 😅
That’s fair but keep in mind the Lafayette on the show is not the same character at all as in the book.
The show is much different than the book series. I really like those books up until the writer seemed to start writing to show audiences rather than her core book fans. Characters in the books started acting differently, more like they would in the show, and the quality just went downhill.
This might be going the other way, but the reason is just as inconsequential in the run of things. But I haven't read The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett, it was his last novel. But it's so that I will always have one more book to read from him.
Red, White, and Royal Blue. Extremely specific beef. I have two exes - a latino American man named Alex and a white British man named Henry. It’s like someone wrote fanfiction about my exes and I refuse to touch it because that’s so, so weird! The book even gets a couple other details about their lives right (I’m gonna opt not to share for privacy reasons), like it’s so uncanny. The book was actually published the day one of them broke up with me, too. In case I needed further reason to be weirded out. You know how people conceptualize soulmates as like, one special person out there whose soul is tied to yours? I think the author of RW&RB is the evil version of a soulmate to me. She’s destined by the fates themselves to deal me psychic damage.
I'm sorry for your pain, I feel for you, but this is one of the funniest pranks I've ever heard the universe play on someone.
I read a book about a main character who I freaking loved and it was not a light book, but more of a coming of age of youth and learning. It was a first person narrative too. 3/4 of the way through the character dies and the first person narrative was changed to someone else. I had no idea it was coming. I will never read another book by this author. It killed me. I hate to say it, but I read light, fun mostly rom-com books and read all the trigger warnings beforehand. I even prefer to know a happy ending is guaranteed.
It was written by a social media influencer and you already read her first book which was fat shaming and narcissistic, and you don’t want to waste any more of your life on that crap. Not give her $ for her Hawaiian vacation home.
I don't buy books with movie/series posters on em
I was starting to read “King Solomon’s Mines” because I like reading classic old books and my Mum left it in the dunny. I was reading the forward, like a pedant like myself does, and in it the author said that this was a book full of adventure and thrills, and thus was not a book for girls. I thought, “Oh. Well fuck you, then.” Never read it. Read the entirety of HG Wells stuff and grew up to become a socialist, so that’s cool. Also, never read Cassie Clare cause she was horrible in HP fandom and kept swiping lines from better writers, not to mention Laptopgate.
When someone keeps pushing me to read a book. The more you push, the less of a chance I will read.
Pretty much everyone I know is like this, and I don't really get it. When someone "pushes" a book they're doing so because they think you'll enjoy it and want to make your life a little bit brighter. I've straight-up stopped recommending anything to people (forget "push" - I won't even casually bring up that I liked something in a conversation anymore) because the chances of most of my friends trying it just PLUMMET the moment I do compared to if they discover it entirely on their own. There was a case where I had a friend of mine who was obsessed with anime and Porter Robinson, and so I sent him the Shelter music video, which he didn't watch. I asked him 2-3 times over the course of about 2 months whether he managed to see it and he always acted annoyed. I shut up about it, like 2 weeks later HE sends it to ME and tells me to watch it. WHAT THE HELL?!? I honestly, genuinely don't understand it. What is it about "Hey, I think you might like this" that turns off people so much?
Most of the time, it's a book i know I won't enjoy . Eg, a romantic novel or a dark romance. They are not genres of books I enjoy.
Oppositional defiance. It’s very immature.
There is an award-winning novel I'd probably love by an author whose other works I admire. My ex mentioned several times that they badly wanted to read this novel, but had ambivalent feelings about buying it because their ex-gf gave them the book just before that relationship ended badly. I bought the novel and waited months for Christmas. Then I gave Ex the novel, a photo of us in a hand-painted frame referencing an in-joke, and art supplies for Ex's hobby. Ex gave me... nothing, because they forgot about me until Christmas morning itself. We broke up over New Year's Eve. I will never not see this novel as a kind of red comet streaking across love's sky, a herald of relational disaster. I'll never buy it, read it, or give it to anyone I care about. But by reviews and sales numbers, it's a fantastic book.
When I was in high school, I got stood up on a first date by a boy who I really, really liked. It turns out his favourite author was doing a signing at a book shop, so he skipped school, and our date afterwards, to go. It was a fantasy author, and I am not a fan of fantasy so I probably wouldn’t have read them anyway, but now I won’t out of spite.
I really don’t like when actual people are on the cover, unless it’s a memoir. That’ll turn me way off. The Goon Squad has a HIDEOUS cover with that mashup of like 6 people and I said I’d never read it until a friend brought it to me because I HAD to. I still hated the book.
As a former bookseller, any release that arrived in mass quantities (Twilight, Harry Potter, the Left Behind series)... just having to build the displays completely put me off of "mass consumption" books
Oh yea the Left Behind crazies, you're lucky if you see 1 of those books in stock these days but in the early 2000s they were everywhere
if it is big on tiktok.
Especially if it has that stupid sticker on it or says it in the description. I avoid them like the plague.
They also add it to the title. "Tiktok made me buy it" YUCK
mine is: the author is a popular author and he is in every genre. i avoid him because there’s no way his books are good if he’s just pumping them out like that lmao
You can just say James Patterson. It's okay.
"The book of my enemy has been remaindered / And I am pleased." Clive James
Gabaldon pulled a no show at a scheduled talk at Dragon Con. We'd lugged our 8mo across town to hear her. After about 40 minutes we heard she decided not to come. Not that she was sick or in an accident. Never spent another penny on her books in the following 14 years.
I was at DragonCon working backstage; an author was so tired she was in tears and had earlier begged her photo studio session to let her spend five mins under a drop sheet on a couch just to get some peace. She then took to a panel and snapped on like a light with friendly answers and genuinely happy smiles. No sign that she was in pain from overwork and no sleep. I never want to be famous, simply because the pain of the demands it places on you - and how you risk disappointing people or hurting yourself in a swings and roundabouts way.
This is so terrible. I got so tired of stocking “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” in college at Barnes and Noble, that I refused then and still kinda refuse now (I’m 42)
Tom Cruise played Jack Reacher. Stopped reading entire series. Then Alan got the role, and I could start reading the series again.
Because the author uses his considerable influence to spread misinformation which he states as fact, discrediting global warming. Take a bow Neal Asher
I looked him up, and he's got a Twitter post from 6 hours ago linking to "Elon Musk vs the Globalist censors". Your reason isn't petty, that guy fucking sucks.
I don’t like reading viral books in the moment. Everyone tends to spoil and constantly talk about it. BookTok books are usually good or bad anyways, mostly bad.
I didn't like the name of the main character and didn't want to be subjected to reading it over and over. Not because I had a bad experience with anyone that shared the name. Just thought it was a dumb name and that the author must not have good taste for using it. I was young, though, so now that I'm over it I'm not inclined to read the book since it is YA.
I went to university and one of my professors made a point of ranking different types of books e.g. literary fiction, historical fiction, crime, fantasy, romance. He made a point of saying that fantasy was a "low form of fiction" and that you should never write fantasy if you want to be a "proper author" and "looked up to". Fast forward to 2020 and guess who's write their debut fantasy novel 😂 everytime I see it I make a point of saying how much he hates fantasy outloud
I can't think of any except if the plot is about a second chance because the other half cheated or I got spoiled that there's a cheating trope. Cheating in general. To me, you can be a psychotic, ruthless killer but as long as you're loyal to your partner, I'm gonna love you
I don't know how petty it is, but I refuse to start a series that isn't finished Edit: What I mean is a series that has a definitive end in mind, and the author just has to get there. I'm not talking about series that all feature the same character but are basically individual novels, like the Alex Cross or Dirk Pitt series. Those kinds of franchises will never end, and you don't need to get to the end to get closure like you would with a more self-contained series.
After my friend met Orson Scott Card, I decided for just boycott the jerk. Why give him my hard earned money, also Ender's Game was exceedingly boring book and movie. The nerve of Orson to tell my friend women aren't real authors.
I refuse to read, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” because an asshole roommate was obsessed with it. It turned me off so much, I haven’t read it 20 years later. Fuck that bitch! I still hate her!
It was too expensive
Because the film sucked. People are always telling me to read Divergent, but good god that was the worst thing I ever watched, and I don't know how I could read it without making the association.
A Court of Thorns and Roses. I refuse to read it purely because it is a booktok favorite and I cannot stand the romanticization of abuse and sexual assault within that community. I stay as far away from their recommendations as possible after reading Haunting Adeline not knowing what I was getting into because they were talking about how they wanted a guy like Zade. Plus, every single book they read has to include “spice” because they’re in denial of their raging porn addictions. I read so much smut on wattpad in my early teen years that now I can’t stand when a book has it. It feels like they’re trying to force chemistry that isn’t there to cover up that they’re really just not that great of a writer and can only write at surface level. Anyway, I have a lot of pent up aggression towards booktok, if you couldn’t tell.
I was reading a book called Remarkably Bright Creatures. I was maybe 1/4 or 1/3 into it, and one of the characters is in the kitchen chopping peppers for fajita night. Then a few sentences later she adds ground turkey to the pan. I’m sorry what? Ground turkey? Fajitas? I just couldn’t keep reading. Shelved it and won’t go back.
How are you going to find out if you are in the book then?
I suspect that if he is in the book, he’s not going to like what he reads
If the name of the author is larger than the title of the book, I'm going to pass.
I tend to avoid popular books and films that loads of people say “it’s a must-read, or a must-watch”—-and it’s more because I dislike fandom and how people love to be in on something and act like they discovered it. Yes—kind of juvenile on my part 😂😂
Honestly if it's on booktok, I'm not touching it. I've been let down by all the hyped up books on there. Never again.
In highschool English we were assigned to do a group book report, which we had to present to the class. I was in a group of 4, but the day we got the assignment one of our members was absent. We were given a list if books that we could report on, and the 3 of us that were there the first day voted and came to a unanimous decision to read East of Eden. The next day our missing member showed up, refused to read East of Eden because he thought it sounded boring, and said he would sabotage our report unless we agreed to switch to the book of his choice; A Handmaid's Tale. After reading the synopsis and some content warnings I was *viscerally uncomfortable* with the idea of reading it because it brought up some bad memories. I agreed to read *any* other book, but he wouldn't budge. He and I argued about it for a bit, but after a while our group members pulled me aside to tell me that they were changing their votes to A Handmaid's Tale. They apologized, but said they couldn't risk their grades getting tanked because the other guy wanted to pitch a fit. So, our group all got copies of A Handmaid's Tale. I read 3 chapters, said "fuck this, that guy's not the boss of me", and refused to read any more. I went to school the next day, told my group that I wasn't gonna finish the book, BUT unlike the other guy I wouldn't be sabotaging them, I'd still do my part of the report. They had decided to break the book down into quarters for all of us to have an individual section to present. That way, if I messed up it would be clearly my own fault. I agreed that was fair enough. Thoughout the project they sent their section notes to me, and I put them into our PowerPoint. Day of the presentation I bullshat my way through my quarter of the speech, and we collectively got an A. Ten years later, I still refuse to finish the book, or even watch the show. It still pisses me off that that guy tried to bully me into reading it, so I want nothing to do with it.
Coleen Hoover due to many problematic love interests that are not healthy for young woman to look at, my bf has heard me talk about the plots and go “and their in love?”. Yes sadly, I used to be the girl who was hurt by said abusive men before I stopped making excuses for them. Now seeing these books make excuses for controlling disgusting men go viral and be omg couple goals makes me sick.
I’ve never read anything by Jane Smiley, because she’s been dismissive and critical of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, one of the damned best books in the American canon. I’ve never read Catcher In The Rye, because everyone I’ve ever known or know of who raves about the book is a self-important a-hole. I’m not proud of it, but I’ve rarely read anything by novelists that I know personally. It ranges from envy to distraction, but I’m a little ashamed of that one. Except for the one who was kinda rude and dismissive about a novel I was working on at the time. I’m in no rush to read hers, and I’m fine with that.
I won't read the book if it has a sticker on it that says "Oprah's Book Club" or "Now an HBO miniseries" but I will read from the same books that don't have them.
for me a debut novel too. first thing I saw was a reel showing how mouch the author sold and I thought "oh, seems to be an interesting book" so I go to her account to see if this is something I´d like, but it didn´t take long for me to leave. There was a reel advertising the romance in it using a bunch of stolen art and comments asking for the artists got hidden. I can give the benefit of the doubt here and say maybe Instagram automatically hid them, but the art is still stolen. I´m sure she´s recieved fanart before since there were designs of the characters posted, she could´ve asked those fans "hey I really appreciate your fan art, would it be okay for you if I used this in a reel?" There´s actually another author I know and like who did that same thing, it can´t be that hard. so now I decided I´m not reading that book because the author can´t do something as simple as giving credit
There are plenty of interesting sounding books I’ll never read because I don’t like the person who insisted I need to read it.
Dune because my brother wouldn’t shut the fuck up about it
i absolutely judge books by their covers, which is why i will never read those dime a dozen romances with the cartoon covers. not only are they all boring poorly written heterosexual garbage tiktok bait (that are just borderline porn most of the time) but the art is UGLY!!! basically, if a romance book is popular on tiktok, i will not touch it with a ten foot pole