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What's this? 

Werewolves? Vampires? Quests? Alpha males? Virginal heroines? Tropes exist for a reason; learn how to use them the right way and when to avoid them.

What types of books are you tired of seeing on the shelves?

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Posted on 3/23/2011
Had enough of vampires? Can't handle one more plain Jane being lusted after by the hottest guy in school? About to toss your cookies if you see one more fairy tale revision? Ready to have a book burning over fallen angels? 

What are you tired of reading about?  Better yet, any prediction on what the newest "it" thing might be?
Showing 41 to 49 of 49 comments
1 year, 8 months, 21 days ago

As opposed to what I don't want to see, I think I'd like to contribute what I would like to see. A good ghost-story would be nice.
But not just any ghost-story more like a realistic haunting that could be within the mind of persever or mistunderstandings leading to creepy situations. And mash a romance in there with the ghost story and I would be sold.

Ghost stories will never be old and as @ tabetha waite says above me good ol' classic spooky castle and historical periods are just that - Classic. Can't go wrong.
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1 year, 8 months, 20 days ago

YA. Period. I hate it. It's too cheesy. Honestly, I wouldn't have any problems with YA if almost every single YA did not feel like it was a big sell out. Seriously.

Everyone here obviously knows how it feels to be a teenager, so you guys would have noticed that almost every single YA novel felt like clones.

Maybe, I need to read more YA novels, but the only YA novel I read that didn't feel like it was selling out was Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. Maybe it's because he gives it away for free. Maybe it was the geekiest YA novel I have ever read.

Also, I read through all four Twilight books to have the right to say the next statement. IT SUCKS! What's worse is that it made vampires look bad. It's probably the main reason why vampire writers go to the genre where you sell out. YA.

I disagree with everyone here why says that vampires and zombies should be taken off the shelves. I recommend I, Vampire, iZombie, The Strain Trilogy, American Vampire. They are good vampire and zombie books. Yes, 75% of the recommendations are comic books, but they are still books.

I only hope books like Little Brother increase exponentially. It makes me happy that LARPers, DNS tunneling and caller ID spoofing are reaching the YA crowd. It makes me happy that there are authors brave enough to tell interesting narratives that involve hacking to a younger audience instead of exploring the lust of teenagers.

After the global recession. I think more fictional books that speculate about the economy should be more mainstream. The government will screw up the economy at some point, so we need more dystopian/utopian books about the economy. It should introduce these concepts to readers in an exciting way and scare us about how bad it could get just like how 1984 scared the crap out of us about how the government may be watching our every move.
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1 year, 8 months, 20 days ago

I'm tired of the 'worthy but dull' literary prize contenders. I've tried really hard to get into books like 'Wolf Hall' and 'The Sea, The Sea' but they leave me completely cold. I can see that they are well executed but they have about as much entertainment value as a dead seal. What I'd like to see emerge are books with strong characters that grab the public interest and get people talking about the stories - a sort of Harry Potter for adults I suppose.
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1 year, 8 months, 19 days ago

If I'd have to name one trope that currently annoys the heck out of me, it's got to be urban fantasy covers. A few months ago I walked into Forbidden Planet London and realized that every shelf in the new release section had at least one book whose cover could best be described 'hot badass woman in black with her midriff bared'. Now I'm not saying that these books were bad, because I honestly haven't read most of them, but the general implication (just in it for the sexiness) just kind of annoyed me (as an aside, my nanowrimo novel for this year is an urban fantasy where the two female leads both hate this style of dress).
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1 year, 7 months, 30 days ago

I've yet to understand the demographic to which those UF covers are supposed to appeal, Timothy. I read UF and I like much of it, but the covers often showcase the female MCs in ways they never appear inside of the books. I find it misleading in an unappealing way.
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1 year, 7 months, 28 days ago

My prediction is that soon, the classic plot with time shenanigans will become cliche. This is when the author plays with time travel, where one of the characters turn out to be a time traveller with limited ability and is trapped in a 'loop'. The time-traveling character is not revealed as an important character until the end of the initial timeline, where all the other characters are all doomed, thus introducing the fact that the initial timeline is merely another 'doomed' or 'unsuccessful' timeline to the time-traveling character. The time-travelling character is trying to save the protagonist and all the rest of his/her friends from the supposedly inevitable event that leads to them all being doomed. Then, in the end, all the characters are saved anyway by some variation/miraculous event/determination of the protagonist/etc.

I hope I didn't sound all too confusing, but I have a feeling that this structure of plot will soon become cliche.
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1 year, 4 months, 12 days ago

Is it me or is the publishing industry putting all their eggs in the celebrity basket. I was told my book was really great but she thought it needed more pop. I asked if I should write that Lady Gaga licked the main character and she got excited. Yeah, I'm keeping my soul thank you and moving on.
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less than one second ago (new)

Bumping this up for the new members to see!
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10 months, 13 days ago

In fantasy, which is most of what I read, I'm tired of two things.  One may burn itself out, but the other is probably here to stay.

First, the one that'll probably burn itself out (eventually): thief and/or assassin stories.  There have just been too many of these lately, and while some of the earlier ones were good (Scott Lynch, Brent Weeks), some of the later ones have the feel of having been cobbled together in a hurry to ride the bandwagon.

Second, the one that's probably here to stay: the hero's journey of a farm (or kitchen) boy who is really the long-lost rightful king.  Sometimes you can just pick up a book like this and know exactly how it's going to end up after only reading two or three pages.

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Showing 41 to 49 of 49 comments

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