Thank you to That Artsy Reader Girl for hosting Top Ten Tuesday.
Oh, boy, here we go with my top ten unpopular bookish opinions. Take it easy on me. Lol.
- I’m not a fan of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s books. (Ducks for cover).
- Romance is not on my go-to list. (I do read them from time to time).
- I LOVE the Oxford comma. (Luckily I’m already under cover).
- I love time travel fiction, but if a woman is flung two or three hundred years in the past after finding a big, magical, blue diamond on the beach, she is NOT going to immediately attract the kind attention of a nobleman or rich man, and they are NOT going to fall madly in love. That’s not how that all worked. Most likely, IF she’s lucky, she’ll be hauled off for indecent exposure and end up in an asylum at some point.
- I don’t enjoy Stephen King’s writing.
- I’m not a fan of stream of consciousness.
- If I read a romance, I don’t enjoy the “enemies to lovers” trope.
- I think Outlander is okay, but I don’t love it. I haven’t read all the books in the series and don’t want to.
- I don’t understand why people have trouble knowing when to use “loose” or “lose.”
- I don’t think writers have to follow Stephen King’s “rules of writing,” particularly when it comes to adverbs.
HOW ABOUT YOU? What are your unpopular bookish opinions?
Fab list! I love that first one and totally agree! 😂
Wow, I thought I was alone in that one!
A good list. I’m not a fan of Stephen King either and get bored with romance novels. But it’s a good thing we all like different types of writing and books.
That’s for sure! It would be boring if we were all the same.
Great list, you forced me to think about mine.
I’m Tudor-ed out. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Wolf Hall et al but for pity’s sake there are other periods of history.
Can’t bear celebrity memoir. They are selling a product I don’t want to buy.
Love memoirs written by people you’ve never heard of before. They are a real slice of history that doesn’t appear in text books.
Romance no, especially if HEA is mandatory.
Love stories, yes. There’s nothing more interesting than people.
Amazed & excited by the wonderful novels coming out of Ireland but (very soft whisper) Sally Rooney doesn’t do it for me. I’ll leave now.
That is really interesting regarding memoirs of people who are not famous, and I agree! As far as romance, it needs to have something else going on, like a historical event.
Agree about romance – that’s what I was getting at when I said I liked love stories. There has to be something more to make it a satisfying story.
Also, I just picked up your book, Back to Creative Writing School, on KU.
Now, I’m feeling slightly nervous…
I really like the “name” exercise you shared.
I have trouble with #9 sometimes, but I’m not a native English speaker 🙂
My TTT: https://laurieisreading.com/2025/04/15/top-ten-tuesday-books-on-my-tbr-i-avoid-reading-and-why/
That makes sense. I just know people who speak only English who get those confused, and it seems to be a new phenomenon.
I hate overtly didactic fiction, novels that are more polemic than fiction, and pretentious prose.
I agree on didactic fiction. There are a lot of books out there that want to “teach a lesson” on current political topics in the middle of their fiction book. I hate that.
If you want to “teach a lesson,” write an essay or a textbook. That’s what they’re for.
Absolutely!
That’s how life is, Bonnie. We are not all the same. There are different likes and dislikes among people.
Yep! Thank goodness, right?
Yes, indeed. We are who we are.
#4 is great! I think 99.9% of people would be in big trouble if they were suddenly thrown back in time 200+ years due to not knowing the social customs, laws, etc of that era. (Not to mention all of the germs back then that our bodies may not be able to fight off very well!)
Agree! My favorite author, Jodi Taylor, writes a series about time-traveling historians, and they always go through decontamination procedures after traveling in time.
Four and five…absolutely. As for loose and lose, I definitely know the difference but I am certain I have added or subtracted an “o” by accident a time or two.
I guess just plain old typos would explain some of it.
Yes but some people really don’t know the difference either.
Great list! I feel the same way about Outlander. I tried to read the first book, but the size of it turned me off. I did watch a few seasons of the TV show and enjoyed that. Agree about the time travel. I love that genre, but people don’t just transport to another era and fall in love like that.
There was also a lot of sexual violence in Outlander.
I agree with many of your points, particularly the Oxford comma and instant love in time travel stories. Maybe I’m showing my age (over 60), but I’d like to know when people started getting confused about the difference between nauseous and nauseated. They mean very different things, and I rarely see nauseous used correctly in recent years.
I’ve finally started to explain it this way to people: nauseous and nauseated are similar to poisonous and poisoned. People don’t feel “poisonous” (except in science fiction perhaps?), and they don’t feel “nauseous.” If you’re sick to your stomach, then something that is nauseous (like rotting meat or sour milk) has made you feel nauseated.
Rant over.
I never really thought about that one, but you are right! It’s great to hear from you.
I love this list, Bonnie. Yes to all of them but #2, I do enjoy romance, and I especially agree with #1.
#4 made me spit out my drink laughing!
Here’s my list: https://franlaniado.wordpress.com/2025/04/15/top-ten-tuesday-controversial-bookish-opinions/
What a great–and brave, I might add–list. I’m with you to some degree on most, except ‘lose’ and ‘loose’. I leave that to my editor!