the anti-TBR tag!

Hello, friends!

Recently, Ngoc tagged me for the Anti-TBR tag and I happily took the opportunity to rant about books I don’t love/don’t care about, as I feel like I’ve mostly been talking about things I do like. And some negativity can be fun sometime, lol.

This tag was created by Nicole @ Nicole & Her Books.

A popular book everyone loves that you have no interest in reading?

Will I be canceled for this? Probably.

I know that everyone and their moms love The Poppy War, and I’m happy to hear it, truly. But there’s nothing about it that appeals to me.

Like, adult fantasy, historical, LONG ASS BOOK (I believe is like over 500+ pages), is pretty much every single thing I do not look for in a book, lmao.

I know it’s kind of a touchy subject because literally EVERYONE loves and raves about this book, and again, I’m sure it’s great, it’s just not for me at all.

A classic book you don’t have an interest in reading?

Honestly? It would be easier to answer the classics I *do* have an interest in reading.

I have four that I’m interested in: The Great Gatsby (literally for no other reason than I became obsessed with the song ‘nothing else i could do’, by ella jane, and it is inspired in this book lol), The Picture of Dorian Gray (because of the movie with Ben Barnes), Frankenstein (I watched Mary Shelley and !!!!!!!!) and Dracula (idk why but like vampires’ origin i guess?).

Apart from these four, I literally do not care about reading anything else. Thanks.

An author whose books you have no interest in reading?

I’m going to have to copy Ngoc’s answer for this one and go with Sarah J. Maas

Y’all do not understand how popular this author is in Brazil. Literally, her fanbase is huge and they’re also lowkey toxic AF and pretty much hate on every person who does not like her books, which is ew.

So the fact is fandom is gross definitely puts me off even more, but nonetheless, nothing could seem less interesting to me than a 500+ page book about faes.

An author you have read a couple of books from and have decided their books are not for you?

I am kind of sad to say it’s probably Helene Dunbar.

I did not hate any of the books I read by her, but I didn’t love them either. They were both very mediocre and forgettable 3 stars, which doesn’t make me very excited to read anything by her in the future.

It’s not even that I didn’t connect with the writing, but her characters just didn’t really get stuck in my feels at all and I forgot about them as soon as I wasn’t reading the book.

Again: there’s nothing inherently bad about her work, but we definitely did not click like I wanted us to.

A genre you have no interest in OR a genre you tried to get into and couldn’t?

Fantasy, definitely. Even though I follow so many creators who love and read so much SFF, I couldn’t care any less for this genre, lmao.

I think I read maybe five fantasy titles this year (and I have read 85 books for reference, so… yeah). I used to really love it back in the day, but now I don’t have the brainpower or the patience for it.

I still read some YA fantasy titles here and there (Rick Riordan does owe this ass after all), but I hardly ever go out of my way to keep up with new fantasy series.

A book you have bought but will never read? (This can be a book you have unhauled/returned to the library unread.)

I bought Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway back in 2018, mostly because it had a cute cover, and it seemed short and not super intimidating, but I got to page like 50 and there were nO DIALOGUES.

The book does not have dialogues.

It’s just humongous paragraphes that literally last for PAGES as this woman talks and talks and talks about her life, and Jesus Christ, I am surprised I even made to page 50.

A series you have no interest in reading OR a series you started and have DNFed?

I DNFed a lot of series, sorry.

I started City of Bones, thought it was boring AF, never finished the first book and despite having a weird amount of knowledge of the Shadowhunters universe, do not intend on reading anything else in this universe.

The Winner’s Trilogy by Marie Rutkowski – The first and second book in the series were being sold for a really good deal, so I bought both but ended up only reading the first one. Literally can not tell you anything that happens in the book.

I actually read the first two books in the Remnant Chronicles series, but the fact absolutely *nothing* happened in the second book turned me off entirely and I never finished it. (Plus, the 3rd book was like 600 pages long. Miss ma’am, maybe you could’ve taken some of that plot and put on the second book then).

A new release you have no interest in reading?

Uhhh, bold of you to assume I keep up with new releases.

But I heard a lot of people reading “The Once and Future Witches”, and while I definitely am not that interested in historical/fantasy books, I also wouldn’t read it because of the trigger warnings, as I am sensitive to some of the topics discussed in it.

Y’all, that’s it! I will be tagging Beck and Ruby for this one. Please don’t be mad if I said I have no interest in reading your favorite book/series/author – it happens with the best of us! Let me know in the comments which series you’ve DNF-ed and what’s a new release you have no interest in picking up!