Book Wish List

This week's Top Ten Tuesday is Books on my winter to-read list but I won't be doing that since I don't make to-read lists. Instead, here's a list of things I would like for books, a book wish list in a way. Everything I listed here is a preference because reading is a preference but I may change my mind on some of these. For more Top Ten Tuesday, visit That Artsy Reader Girl here.

01 - More friendship, less romance — I like to know why romance is necessary because I haven't read a single book without romance in it unless it's a middle grade book and even then, there seems to be hints of it. I prefer a friendship story over a romance story any day but that isn't due to me hating romance or anything, I just prefer friends fighting over who gets the last pie over men/women fighting over each other.

02 - Less opened-ended endings  — Most books now seems to have more open-ended endings as if they are being prepared for a sequel which irks me. Even in a series, there should be closure. I think what annoys me more is when they introduce a new problem to interrupt the ending when it's clear it should have ended.

03 - Less vampires (and zombies) —  This is more of a personal preference but darn it, vampires annoy me. I find every paranormal or fantasy book are full of them, like authors must have vampires in their books or they can't call their book a fantasy. Considering there are books specifically about vampires, why they need to add this creature to books that really don't need them, I don't know.
    And zombies — seriously, I don't like to read them at all. But what I hate is when an author uses it to compare things. For example, "She longed for a donut like a zombie long for youknowhat" - do I need such an image especially since it's not even a horror book?

04 - Less pop culture references —  I'm not much into knowing all the trends and happenings and who's famous and all that so whenever there is a pop culture reference, most of the time, I don't know who or what they are referring. Maybe if a book takes place in a very specific time period I can understand the need to mention pop culture references, otherwise I see no reason to use them.

05 - Less future scenes to start a book — This is like flipping to the back of the book, read a bit, go back to the front of the book and then start reading. So I only read a few books with this kind of beginning but I really just don't like them. The future scene lures me to read the book because that's what I read when reading a sample of the book but it's such a letdown to find out I have to read 300 or more pages to get back to that scene and usually, I get never there because I lose interest and mostly because it seems like it's a whole different book.

06 - More back covers for ebooks — With an ebook, there is usually no back cover. When you've reached the very last page, a page pops up and asks you to rate the book but once in a while, it also asks you to rate a book even if it's not the last page of the book. If you use the content list and go to the chapter marked 'End', it will go to the end of the story, not the last page of the book.
    Maybe you can ignore the last few pages of a book because it's usually just the author's bio (which I actually like to read), a list of books the author has written, publisher's info/credits, advertisements or a list of content (this is rather strange but some ebooks have their content list at the end of the book). To me, a book does not end until I see the back cover. (I assume all ebooks of the same book would have the same amount of pages and the same no back covers but if I'm wrong, let me know). (Note: I read ebooks on a kindle. And I had only came across two or maybe three books with back covers and that's a couple of years of reading ebooks.)

07 - More books with good guys who are generally nice  — Good guys who are generally nice is probably boring to people and it might be a bit old fashioned as well but I like them. I don't think you have to be an asshole to be a badass and this goes for males and females. I prefer good guys who are actually good, not good guys who are considered good just because he/she does the right moral thing but still teeters on the edge of darkness. I call them assholes because most of the time, they behave like one. There seems to be a lot of series where the main lead is a general asshole but people still like those books and I don't understand it but then again, people also like serial killers as main characters so what do I know?

08 - Make book series shorter — Perhaps book series should be shorter as they seem to be getting way too long. I think a series should be three books or less with some exceptions. I see series that are 40 books long and I'm not going to read 40 books, I don't care how short they are. And the longer a series is, the more the reader have to spend but it's not the money, it's more like, who has time to read a long series? Or why do we need more than three books to tell a complete story?

09 - Make the first book in a series free  — Since most books are series, it makes sense to allow the reader to get the first book free. I always know if I want to read a series by reading the first book. Frankly, I don't go by the 'it gets better in book two' reading method because if I didn't care one bits about the first book, why would I read the second one?

10 - More standalones — Unless I count reading the first book in a series and quitting, I pretty much haven't read that many genuine standalones. I'm not saying there aren't a lot of standalones but in the types of books I read, there just aren't that many. Or maybe I just haven't found them? (I read a lot of fantasy, paranormal murder mysteries, regular murder mysteries, adventures, middle grade and once in a moon blue science fiction books.)

What bookish things do you wish for?