Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week there is a new Top Ten list and everyone is welcome to join. All you do is link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! It’s a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.
This week’s topic:
Top Ten Trends You Would Like to See More or Less of
Less of:
1. Human girl – Supernatural guy – No more vampires or werewolves falling in love with innocent human girls, please. I’m dying for this trend to go.
2. Covers like these – I don’t judge a book by it’s cover. But I don’t really see the purpose of having different cover designs, if all are going to be so similar, and so similarly tacky. I haven’t read these books to know/like them, but I am tired of even looking at such covers!
3. Self-publishing – As much as I like to try new authors; and some of these self-published books can be really good, I do think that self-publishing (“at a very affordable price”) has reduced the competition and made it very easy to write books! You don’t just wake up one day and decide to publish a book. Self-publishing does produce piles of books that could use more work, which isn’t to say that traditional publishers produce genius.
4. Journal/Diary format – Don’t you get tired of people (mostly troubled teenagers) pouring their hearts out left, right and center? Something really needs to be done about that.
5. Dialogue – I always consider too much dialogue as a draw-back in a book. If you cannot convert a page long conversation into a paragraph, you can’t write all that well!
6. Series that go on forever – There are so many book series, where you just know the writer is planning the story along the way. And by the time you reach the end of the series, it’s hard to believe how it started off. Twilight, for instance. A series should either be like Harry Potter, connected from the start to the end. Or like Discworld, where only the setting is common for all the books and you can pick any book and start reading the series there!
More of:
1. Longer books – Most of the books I have read lately aren’t longer than 200-250 pages! Of course, there are long books too, I just think there should be more of them. The book shouldn’t end right after you get really into it!!
2. Translations – I know that translations sometimes lose the magic of the original book. But I would definitely like to read more books from the non-English speaking parts of the world!
3. Book to Television – Following the news about an American Gods (Neil Gaiman) HBO series and the fact that I really don’t think movies do justice to books, I think there should be more television series based on books – and really good books – not just Gossip Girl or the Vampire Diaries!
4. Humour – I would definitely like to see more humour. And by that I mean more of actual sharp makes-you-chuckle-at-every-line wit; and less of situational comedy!
Tabula Rasa 
I like the idea of books to TV. I had no clue they were doing an American Gods interpretation; I need to read it right away now! There are some crappy TV-book couplings, like Gossip Girl. But I have to say that I find True Blood entertaining. Or at least I did until it took a whole new path and basically careened off a cliff.
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Thanks for stopping by!
I really like your list, except I'm a bit sad you hate those covers (I'm tacky and love them 😉 )!
I totally agree about the longer books. What's up with that anyway? It seems the publishing industry thinks we have the attention span of a butterfly…
And humour: YAY! Have you read Beauty Queens by Libba Bray? I've heard it's really funny!
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Humor is something I'd love to have back in books. Humor, humor…where are you?
Here's my Top Ten list for this week:
Top Ten Trends You'd Like to See More Of
I hope you will stop by and join in Readerbuzz's August Giveaway!
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this is a well thought out list–I totally agree on the book to TV Series. You are right, a movie just can't do them justice. Some books have enough in them for years of television viewing. I'm excited to hear about the HBO series for Niel Gaimon's book. MTV is always a step ahead of the other networks.
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Great list. I really agree with your "less" section, for the most part. I think self-publishing can be really great, but readers can't read everything and the quality control really isn't there.
Check out my list at The Scarlet Letter.
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I totally agree about Human Girl/Supernatural boy. Great list.
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I am so in agreement about self publishing. Though there are exceptions, I can't help but think this will only lead to less quality books and the dumbing down of publishing and reading in general.
And all those similar covers. I too posted about these sorts of covers. Ugh.
Great post.
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