books I will (almost) never read

[ritaxis]

Do you have a list of elements that wll keep you from reading a book? I do. A strong enough recommendation from a person who knows my taste, or whose taste is aligned with mine, especially if they include a note about why they think the book is readable even with that element present, will sometimes cause me to try a book anyway. But usually, the minute I know the book contains one of these, it's off my to-read list with prejudice.

These are the things I can think of right now:

1. mercenaries


2. assassins


3. serial killers


4. an unexamined hero-worship of policemen or soldiers (I can certainly handle heroic policemen and soldiers, but the author has to have a nuanced view of the work environment and the complex political and moral universe surrounding these people)


5. a storyline designed to "justify" slavery, aristocracy, capitalism, or the penal system (I understand how come there are people who do this with respect to capitalism, but the others?  how can they?)


6. people who are better than other people because of qualities they inherited


7. (to borrow a phrase from Patrick Nielsen Hayden) unreflective pastoralism (rural settings with an intelligent view of the relationship between urban and rural, class relationships, and material conditions and culture of the rural working class are more than welcome)


8. people who are villains because they are born to be villains, particularly if they are from "the south" or "east" or they are "swarthy" or "sallow" and my dog how is this still a thing and why do I see it


9. soulfuckingmates


10. the word "abs" outside of dialog assigned to an idiot (edit: becauser it signifies the obtification of men's bodies and the fetishization of a particular type of hypermasculinizagtion)


11. men who are supposed to be sexy because they are brutal, or because they are overly muscled, or because their profession is authoritaria


12. (edit) the dead bodies of women as plot tokens (suggested by personheadpantryslut along with the corollary:


13. the dead bodies of sex workers triply so

The problem with numbered lists--well, there are lots of them, but I can't figure out how to turn that 13 into a 12a. Thank you personheadpantryslut for 12 & 13, which should be 12  & 12a, and thank you personheadredbird for asking for clarity on 10.
​

Comments

[redbird]

Item 10 seems somewhat anomalous; not so much because I use the word myself on occasion (though less now that I'm not going to an actual gym or talking to a trainer) as that it seems less important than the others. A marker for general body/weight-lifting obsession, or just something you've run into one time too many?

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

A marker for a certain objectification of the male body, and an exaggerated attention to a hyper-masculinized, overdeveloped sort of body.

[redbird]

That all makes sense, and I'm not sure what it signifies that I hadn't thought of it. Thanks for clarifying.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Melanie: "Hey, I use 'abs' all the time!"

Rolas: "As she was saying."


I'll also cop to using "sallow", but it was in conjunction to describing a sexual assault counselor Melanie hired to help her future sister-in-law.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Dead women's bodies as plot tokens.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Dead sex worker bodies triply so.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Absolutely: I'll add because this is true for me too.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

From your list, I agree totally with numbers 2-9 and 11. Off hand I can't think of any stories with mercenaries that I found problematical and I enjoyed Mary Gentle's Ash. Similarly I haven't noticed "abs" being mentioned in anything I've read recently, but I agree with your explanation in one of the comments as to why you find it a turn off.

Number 6 is why I cannot read Josephine Tey, despite her being an excellent writer in other respects.

I'm rather surprised that vampires weren't on your list because however interesting a book sounds, vampires are a no-no for me, especially the more recent trend to have young women falling for the centuries old but young-looking and ever so handsome man.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I find Josephine Tey troubling for similar reasons, though I used to love her work. What makes me want to stop reading a book isn't exactly "people who are better than other people because of qualities they inherited." Some kinds of inherited qualities (like beauty) bother me a lot more than others (like intelligence.)

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

So many sorts that broadcast "Not My Sort!" so I'll mention only two here, which are related in some ways:

Poor - bad - amateur writing and anything that has The Shattered Seas of Ceaseless Planets, Thrones of the Battered Heart, Swords of the Fascinating Meaningless Whatevers, etc. Fantasy has really run out of meaningful names for characters, ranks, weapons, kingdoms, Big Bads, Gorgeous Goods, and all the rest.

I'mma gonna cheat and add a third: anything with a protag - 1st person pov-narrator who constantly addresses the reader to sneer at the reader, threaten the reader, and tell the reader how inferior the reader is to the narrator. I say this after attempting to read Steven Brust's currently published HAWK: A New Novel of Vlad Taltos. This narrator is progressively more ugly in every book. He's not witty, urbane or any of the other characteristics his author thinks Taltos is, though still doubtless standing in for how the author thinks of himself. Even more than ugly though, Taltos is pathetic in his sense of how superior he is to everyone around him, with his posse of truly superior friends, who remain forever devoted to him no matter what -- and without whom he'd have died the True Death long long ago, doubtless to the great relief of readers who don't drink the fanboy kool-aid.


Love, C.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Thank you - I shall apply most of these to my future purchases.