T10T: Popular Books I'm Removing from my TBR

April 30, 2019

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly blog meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

This week’s theme was about quotes, but I did a quote list not too long ago (complete with some pretty images I made that you can borrow if you like them!).

Instead, this week I’m doing something totally unrelated: 10 popular books I’m removing from my TBR! I sorted my Goodreads TBR shelf by “number of ratings” and am showing the 10 most-rated books I’m removing from my TBR.

I decided to do this because I’m actually planning on doing a huge Goodreads TBR purge in May, and will be making a whole post about it, so keep an eye out for that!

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1. Jane Eyre — Charlotte Brontë
number of ratings: 1,430,146
why I’m removing it: I’m just not big on classics. I did read a graphic novelization of this and it was an okay plot, but it wasn’t worth me picking up the actual book for, IMO.
2. Everything I Never Told You — Celeste Ng
number of ratings: 229,922
why I’m removing it: I do want to check out Ng’s work, but I’d rather start with Little Fires Everywhere. I didn’t remember that this was about child death, and that’s a TW I don’t touch too often.
3. Go Ask Alice — Anonymous
number of ratings: 219,275
why I’m removing it: I can totally respect how important it was to have a book about teen drug addiction in 1971, but I can’t see this as being as relevant today as a more recent book on the topic would be.
4. American Psycho — Bret Easton Ellis
number of ratings: 203,942
why I’m removing it: Honestly, this author is such an asshole (sources 1, 2, 3, 4) that, every time I see this on my TBR, I just don’t want to read it because he put such a bad taste in my mouth!
5. The Exorcist — William Peter Blatty
number of ratings: 156,594
why I’m removing it: I tried reading this years ago and couldn’t get into it. I always thought I’d try again, but the more time passes, the less likely it seems that I actually will.

6. We Need to Talk About Kevin — Lionel Shriver
number of ratings: 138,056
why I’m removing it: This never intrigued me too much to begin with, and after reading the reviews of several friends whose taste tends to run very similarly to mine, I feel like I would just be pissed off by how awful the mother/narrator seems to be.
7. Guilty Pleasures — Laurell K. Hamilton
number of ratings: 124,822
why I’m removing it: I was never particularly interested in this series, but some friends finally convinced me to add it to my TBR a couple of years ago. After it being on the shelf this long, though, I’m just still not interested, so I’m not gonna force myself.
8. Warm Bodies — Isaac Marion
number of ratings: 96,146
why I’m removing it: The movie was okay, but this doesn’t strike me as a book I’d really enjoy all that much. I used to love anything with zombies, but I got a little burnt out on the theme. This is the one I’m most interested in hearing if I should keep it, though, so let me know if you’ve read this!
9. Lincoln in the Bardo — George Saunders
number of ratings: 93,214
why I’m removing it: I remember EXACTLY why I added this: because I saw it on Litsy so much when I first signed up! It doesn’t sound exciting to me at all. I don’t really care about hist-fic revolving around Abraham Lincoln. ?‍♀️
10. The Outsider — Stephen King
number of ratings: 90,025
why I’m removing it: There are a lot of King titles I might want to check out someday, but this is pretty low on that list, especially since many friends have told me it’s best to read this after the Mr. Mercedes series, which I’m also not really interested in.


Do you think I should KEEP any of these on my TBR? Let me know why in a comment! ♥

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More about Destiny @ Howling Libraries

Just a horror aficionado/geek girl trying to juggle motherhood, reading, blogging, gaming, and everyday life.

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    1. For some reason, I’ve blocked Go Ask Alice from memory completely, and it’s not because I found it particularly difficult or scary to read. I’ve read it at least 2-3 times, and never have any memory of it whatsoever. Aside from that, I loved We Need to Talk About Kevin, Everything I Never Told You, and Jane Eyre, so it’s too bad you’ve lost interest, although I can understand why.

      1. That’s so strange that you blocked Go Ask Alice from your memory like that! I wonder why. ? I can’t say I’ve had that happen to me with books, but it has definitely happened with a few movies I’ve seen multiple times!

        1. I have no idea! I don’t remember it being particularly scary for me or anything, but no matter how many times I read it, I couldn’t remember any details whatsoever.

    1. Oh I like this topic. I have a bunch of books I don’t think I’m going to get to either, so I can totally relate to this!

    1. I haven’t read any of these, but due to some pushing from a friend, I’m hoping to pick up Jane Eyre soon! From what I’ve gathered about the story, it does seem like I’ll enjoy it, but classics can sometimes be a hit or miss for me! I have Everything I Never Told You on my tbr, but don’t have any plans to read it soon. It’s just collecting dust there. Haha. Great post, Destiny! <3

    1. Ha I haven’t read any of these either and I am not very interested in them either with the exception of Jane Eyre and The Outside. And with interested in those I mean, maybe some day haha. Stephen King has so far been a bit of a miss for me anyway and I have some other things on my shelf by him I’d rather try since he did write so much.

    1. I’ve only read Jane Eyre, but that was a long time ago. It’s not like removing a book from your TBR means that you’ll never read it. A few years from now you could be walking along thinking “yeah, I really want to read that book after all” and it’s still there, LOL.

    1. I personally love classics so I loved Jane Eyre and would recommend to keep it, but I know it’s not for everyone and wouldn’t want to make you read something you wouldn’t enjoy! ?

    1. Nice choice of theme to do this week!! I read Everything I Never Told You and I say you’re totally valid in removing it. It is a tough topic and well written, but you are totally ok in not reading it. I do want to read Little Fires Everywhere as well, haven’t gotten to it yet!

    1. Good for you. Purges are a totally necessary part of having a TBR. I just did one recently myself.
      My TTT.

    1. Great prompt! I have never read or have had any of these books on my tbr except Jane Eyre. It’s a huge book and requires patience to get through some of the parts but it’s got a great message for sure.

    1. Great list! I tried reading Warm Bodies and couldn’t get into it, so I think the movie’s actually better anyway. Lionel Shriver is another author who’s said some stuff fairly recently that I haven’t been too impressed with, and as much as I try to separate the art from the artist when I can I don’t like supporting people who are just assholes.

      1. Thank you! I actually didn’t know that about Lionel Shriver, but a quick google search immediately had me like “YIKES” so thank you for mentioning that! I feel you, I’m not big on supporting people who are assholes in general haha!

    1. I love ‘cleaning’ my GoodReads TBR, it always gives me a good feeling haha
      (www.evelynreads.com)

    1. I haven’t read Everything I Never Told You, but I just finished Little Fires Everywhere and it was FANTASTIC! As for Warm Bodies, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the book! I don’t tend to read zombie stories, but my friend convinced me to read and I was pleasantly surprised. I haven’t watched the movie though, so I don’t know how it compares.

    1. Damn Ellis is a jerk. I found all of those articles ye linked to be extremely interesting. I happen to think american pyscho was one of the worst books I have ever read. I hated how women were portrayed and I refuse to watch the movie. I will never actively give that man me hard earned loot. Arrrr!
      x The Captain

    1. I love cleaning up my shelves. I think if you change our mind about these, you can always add them back at a later time.

    1. I’ve read Jane Eyre and really enjoyed it, but I understand it isn’t for everyone. I read a good chunk of the Anita Blake series by Laurel K Hamilton, but gave up on it years ago. So I think dropping Guilty Pleasures is a good call. Here is our Top Ten Tuesday.

    1. I haven’t read any of these either, but they’re not on my TBR at all. I did the GR TBR purge last year. It was so freeing. I want mine to be under 100 books by the end of this year. I’m getting close.

        1. No, because I keep adding new releases so I’m back up to around 120. I feel better about it, though. All the older books are ones I own so I am trying to throw them in between ARCs.

    1. Can I plead with you to add Go Ask Alice back to your list? It is a book I read as a teenager and have re-read many times over the years. It is so powerful.

    1. I think you’ve made the right call on all of these, haha. I’m only personally familiar with Go Ask Alice (silly contrived little book) and We Need to Talk About Kevin (I read about 10% and agreed with how awful the narrator is, plus I don’t like reading letters). I’ve also since learnt the author herself is a bit awful, so no loss there. 😛

      1. This is such a late reply and I’m so sorry, but I was happy to see someone agree with me on not bothering with Go Ask Alice and We Need to Talk About Kevin, and I also had to ask, what happened with the author? 😮

    1. I will say I absolutely DEVOURED Warm Bodies in one sitting a while back. I really liked it and have been intending to re-read it at some point. It’s definitely a much different take on zombies and iirc the book is different/better than the movie (typical, I know). So I support you reconsidering but understand if you still don’t feel like it would interest you. 🙂

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