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#TopTenTuesday: Unpopular Book(ish) Opinions

Dini @ dinipandareads29 Comments

We’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s theme is: unpopular bookish opinions (submitted by Kaitlin Galvan @ Somehow I Manage Blog).

I feel like this prompt is pretty open to interpretation–either I can talk about unpopular thoughts I have about certain bookish things, or I can talk about unpopular opinions I have about certain books. To be honest, I find both ways difficult to answer because, for the most part, I do agree with the majority of the bookish community! So I thought why not do a half-and-half? I’ll mention the five books I have unpopular opinions about, as well as five unpopular bookish opinions I have.

Unpopular Book Opinions

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. Y’all, I could cry for how much I ended up disliking this book. It made me so sad because everything about it sounded like something that I would fall madly, deeply in book love with, but that wasn’t what happened. I was confused, hopelessly lost and didn’t connect with any part of this. I struggled a lot with the magical realism in this book, and I’m pretty sure it’s why I’m not a fan of this much magical realism in books. It was a lot.

The Hobbit or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien. I’m sorry Tolkien fans, I did not enjoy this book at all. Maybe the problem is that I watched the movie before reading the book? Although tbh, I still think I would have struggled to get through it without watching the movie. I had high expectations but this really let me down. I found it so boring… My disappointment with this book is also the reason why I have yet to read The Lord of the Rings books.

The Magicians (The Magicians #1) by Lev Grossman. I found this book so boring. Everything about the blurb and the title and everything was so exciting to me, but when I picked it up I found it a slog to get through. Also, very melancholy (nothing wrong with that, I just didn’t feel it with this book).

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney. A lot of people really enjoyed Rooney’s debut but I was definitely not one of them. I struggled to get through this one and I really wanted to DNF it, but of course, I didn’t. This book was highly depressing and the characters were so unlikable, and with such a character-driven book, this made it a big struggle for me. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed Normal People, but IMO the characters were much more relatable and likeable in it.

Ace of Shades (The Shadow Game #1) by Amanda Foody. I’ve heard a lot of people who read YA fantasy dislike this book because it reminded them too much of Six of Crows. Well, yes, it did a little bit but I really enjoyed a lot about this book. The characters, the world-building, the magic and mystery. It was a good book and I can’t wait to read the sequel King of Fools.

Unpopular Bookish Opinions

E-books are seriously the best. As much as I love having a physical book in my hands, the convenience of e-books is unmatched. I can carry thousands of books with me in one go, I can highlight my favourite passages and make notes without physically marring my books with highlighters/pens/pencils, and I can look them up with ease and upload them to my GR, easy as pie.

I don’t mind dog-eared pages…if I do it in my own books. Okay, I know this is highly hypocritical, but if it’s my book I’m okay with dog-earring its pages, but I absolutely hate it when people borrow my books and dog-ear the pages. I know it’s so weird, but I also make So most of the time I just tell people that I don’t like dog-earring pages so they don’t do it to the books they borrow from me!

I like to bend my book spines. Honestly though, how difficult is it to read a paperback and not bend the spine? When the spine doesn’t get bent I feel like I have to shove my face all in the novel just to read all the text! As much as I try not to bend them, it happens anyway, and the feeling of having a book open up all the way while reading is so satisfying. Yes, I’m a spine bender and I ain’t mad about it!

Graphic novels and audiobooks count as reading books (and so they count towards your GR reading goals). I don’t know if this is really a thing but I always see people ask whether audiobooks and graphic novels count as “reading”. I mean, yes? You tend to invest more time in audiobooks and even though graphic novels are shorter reads and thus you end up ‘reading more’, you’re still reading, right?

I like to watch shows or movies before reading the book and sometimes I even like it better than the book. One such example of this for me is Game of Thrones. I read four of the books but I don’t think I could re-read them and neither did I feel the need to continue reading them. Another one is also The Magicians TV show–I found the book so boring but the show? Super exciting, dark and creepy!

What are some of your unpopular book(ish) opinions? If you’ve done a Top Ten Tuesday post for today’s prompt, leave your link in the comments below! 🙂

29 thoughts on “#TopTenTuesday: Unpopular Book(ish) Opinions”

  2. I could never watch the movie or tv adaptation first! I’d never manage to read the book becasue I already know what happens. I also LOVED Ace of Shades and King of Fools is going to hurt your soul. I also didn’t love the Magicians. I totally prefered the TV show!

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  5. I personally think LOTR is better than The Hobbit, but I completely understand how hard it is to get into the writing. Maybe just watch the movies? They’re amazing!
    YESS I love Ace of Shades. It gets such a bad rap for being similar to SoC when it’s actually it’s own unique thing. I hope you enjoy King of Fools when you read it! It has a girl gang and it’s great.
    I prefer physical books but I love ebooks as well! It’s so much more convenient to read them when I’m laying down in bed or on a trip somewhere.
    Great post! 😊

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    • Yas, the movies are my fave! I actually watch them pretty often. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard for me to get into the books because I have such high expectations? 😜
      Omg, girl gang?! That has me even more excited for KoF! Yay! Also, I think as a mood reader ebooks are so convenient coz I can literally shuffle through books so easily to find one I want to read!
      Thanks for stopping by, reading and commenting 😀

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  6. Great list!! I cannot get out of the Shire so I also am not a Tolkien fan.
    Ebooks I’m divided on, I love real books, and I understand the convenience of ebooks BUT I get migraines when I read using an e-reader/phone/tablet- my eyes don’t like it 😕

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  7. If you struggled with The Hobbit, let me gently suggest not reading Lord of the Rings. It was very slow going there at times…and I’m saying that as someone that did enjoy that trilogy.

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    • Oh, thanks for that Lydia, that’s good to know! I was really sad that I didn’t enjoy The Hobbit because I was really looking forward to reading it! I guess it’s just not for me? 🤷🏻‍♀️

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    • Fair enough, sometimes it’s like that for me, but for the most part it’s because I don’t have patience and want to get in on the hype! 😂 I’m such a mood reader though, so that also means I never know when I’ll read the book!

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  11. I agree that ebooks are definitely the best! So convenient! That’s interesting that you like to watch the show/movie before the book. Most people I know (myself included) do it the other way, but I like how unique that is. 😀 I do sometimes enjoy the show/movie more than the book, which is fine.

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    • It’s only for some movies/books though! Like, when I don’t have the patience to wait for my mood to suit the read 😛 Right now, I’m struggling to wait to watch Good Omens since I haven’t finished the book… But really want to watch it! Haha

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  12. The first time I read the Hobbit I DNF, but the second time I tried reading it I loved it! You have to both like those types of books and be in the right mindset for it haha.

    I dog ear the pages of my books too! And while I wouldn’t care if my friends borrowed them and did the same thing, I totally understand not wanting them to do it! I have a set of colored pencils that is mine and it ok for me to press way to hard and get them out of order, but if someone else were to do it I would freak out and get all protective 😂 😂 It doesn’t makes sense but I can’t helo it haha

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    • Oh, I don’t know if I could read The Hobbit again but that does make me think that maybe, if I’m in the right mood, I’ll pick up LOTR. I think it was just a different writing style to what I expected and that’s why it fell flat for me lol

      I leave a bookmark in the book if a friend borrows it and kindly suggest they use it or sticky notes to mark pages and stuff 😂 I totally get what you mean with your colored pencils — sometimes it’s just special things to us! Haha

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  14. […] #TopTenTuesday: Unpopular Book(ish) OpinionsYikes… Do I have anything to add? Just a few. I have one very unpopular bookish opinion about Red, White & Royal Blue. I enjoyed it enough but I didn’t love it like 99.9% of the book community. Am I heartless? Also, I read The Night Circus and it was just okay… I was honestly a little bored. Also, I loved Normal People by Sally Rooney and I know a lot of others loved it too but I think the majority didn’t.#TopTenTuesday: Bookish Characters I’d Like to Befriend!Omg, if I were to list all the new characters I’d like to add to this list it might be endless. I’ve read so many amazing books with awesome characters since writing this in July 2019 and I wouldn’t even know where to start with listing all my new faves, so I’ll leave this as is 😂#TopTenTuesday: Autobuy AuthorsOh I’ve definitely added to this list and I realise a lot of them are romance authors because I’ve been doing a lot of romance reading but there are non-romance authors too, of course! To name a “few”: Mariana Zapata, Meghan Quinn, Rin Chupeco, Kate Stewart, Elizabeth Lim, Elizabeth Acevedo, Colson Whitehead…#TopTenTuesday: Books from A Genre I Want to Read More Of…Embarrassingly only one of the books on this TTT has made it off the list (Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule). The others are still sitting untouched on my physical shelves and *for shame* 🙈#TopTenTuesday: Books I Enjoyed Outside My Comfort ZoneI have a few more to add to this include Rules for Vanishing and Harrow Lake! Both are of the horror variety and we all know that I’m The Ultimate Chicken™️ 😜#TopTenTuesday: Spring 2020 Possibility Pile!I’m basically calling myself out with this one because I’ve only read three of the books that I said I wanted to. As a mood reader, the chaotic world events have not been great for reading. I’ve been feeling irritable, anxious, restless, and all that negative stuff which has made it very hard to focus on reading. But also, Animal Crossing. That is all 🙃 […]

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