The A to Z Challenge almost slipped away from me these last few days but I’m determined to finish what I started so my last post will be for the three letters I missed and will also attempt to answer the question asked by The Broke and The Bookish for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday meme.
Top Ten Words/Topics That Instantly Make Me Buy/Pick Up A Book
Some things that make me want to buy the book instantly:
- Dystopian stories – I know they’ve been done to death recently but I’m such a sucker for these stories. I love the idea of one person changing the world, for the just standing up against oppression… It never gets old for me.
- Names starting with X. Seriously. I read a lot of fantasy and science fiction, and one of my favourite things about the genre are the outlandish names. Xander, Xena, Xavier – some of my favourite characters ever!
- Music – if the story has anything to do with music, especially classical music or conservatory life, I’m probably going to buy it.
- Foreign settings – While this may seem obvious considering I read SF/F, lately, if I pick up a fantasy set anywhere but pseudo middle-age Europe, I’ll probably buy it. I particularly love fantasy/sci-fi takes on Oriental and South American locations at the moment.
- Yggdrasil – if there’s Norse mythology in the story, I’m reading it.
- Dance – sadly, I haven’t read half as many dance related books as I’d like to but they’re on my TBR list and I’ll get there eventually. I’d love to read a dance-orientated dystopian novel… Like Step-Up with a real revolution… hm…
Some things that make me want to toss the book instantly:
- Female characters that require rescuing – if I read this sort of scenario in the blurb, chances are I won’t buy the book.
- Sports – I just don’t know or care enough about sports to relate to a book dedicated to the topic.
- Unneces’sary apost’rophes in n’ame’s – this annoys me no end in SF/F. Sure, real languages have apostrophes mid word but they do something, add an inflection, change the pronunciation, mark an elision or have some sort of purpose. Apostrophes in fantasy and sci-fi names for the sake of looking cool just irritate me.
- 20th Century historical settings – I love ancient history and I adore 19th Century settings but the 20th Century settings just really don’t do it for me, especially if the book is set in or around WWI and WWII.
So I failed to find something for z… Well then here’s a quirky tidbit about me as a reader for the letter ‘z.’ I have pet words, words that make me warm and fuzzy reading and that instantly make me like the author a lot more for using them (properly, of course). Some of these words include quasar, viridian, nefarious and cornucopia. Two of my favourite z words are Zenith and Zephyr, I like the last so much I’ve even named a character after the pesky Greek wind.
And thus concludes the exhausting April A to Z Challenge for 2013. I look forward to doing it again next year!
What makes you want to buy (or toss) a book instantly?
