Booktag: The In Or Out Booktag

Today I’m doing something I haven’t been doing for a very, very long time. A book tag. I did them back on the old blogs, but not on this one yet. Untill now. I saw this tag over at Chonky books, who saw this tag at Books are 42. This leads back to Once Upon An Ordinary. We don’t know if she’s the creator or not. So, are you the creator or do you know who created this tag? Please let me know so I can properly pin-back you. This tag seemed fun, so I decided to do it. Let’s go!

1. Reading the Last Page First

OUT – (but I actually do it) Well, this is actually a very bad habit of mine as I explained in this Let’s Talk Bookish blogpost were I’ve discussed reading reviews and spoilers. It’s an annoying bookish petpeeve, but I can’t help myself LOL.

2. Enemies to Lovers

IN – I have to agree with Etta here, these books have the best banter. However, for me it depends on the setting. I really dislike office romances. But I have to admit that this trope gets a little annoying sometimes, because it’s a little overdone.

3. Dream Sequences

IN – Again, it depends on the way it’s done. In Vampire Academy and Bloodlines by Richelle Mead these work very well as they provide information about the story. When dream sequences are implementend randomly without connecting to the plot that much, I’m out to be honest.

4. Love Triangles

OUT – Can we leave them in the early 2010’s? I mean, they might work well, but we have seen enough of them haven’t we?

5. Cracked Spines

OUT – I don’t read physical books but I had to choose something LOL.

6. Back To My Small Town

IN – These type of books tend to suck you in fromtstart to finish, although the plot is getting a little repetitive sometimes. We see this trope often in romance, or in the feelgood genre we know in the Netherlands. Yes, we have our own feelgood genre. There are so many books with this certain trope in there that I can’t read them back to back though. However, they still intrigue me as a reader so therefore I say IN.

7. Monsters Are Regular People

OUT – I struggle with this question as well, just like Etta. If it said Villains it would have been clearer and then I would said IN since there’s always a background story to a villainious character. Whether it’s a good one or a sob story.

8. No Paragraph Breaks

OUT – Isn’t that the basic of formatting texts? There should be a break in between paragraphs to make the text atractive for readers, shouldn’t there?

9. Multi-Generational Sagas

IN – I love those books! They suck me in from start to finish, when written well. They often teach you something about a lesser known historical aspect and you find out about it alongside the characters – often from the younger generations.

10. Re-reading

IN – I do this often when books get translated into Dutch, to find out if I missed something. Also, I have several comfort books I tend to re-read when I’m quite slumpy or just don’t know what book to pick up. I mainly re-read these as an audiobook though.

11. Artificial Intelligence

OUT – Sci-fi is one of the genres I enjoy less, unless there’s something at stake as for example with The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer. Usually, sci-fi is hard to understand as I dropped physics and chemistry as soon as I could in high school. The stories are often detailed and therefore complicated.

12. Drop Caps

OUT – I don’t have much to do with them. Plus, they sometimes make the book less accessible for screenreaders as they are often decorative and astthetically pleasing. Screenreaders have hard times with anything graphic, so yeah.

13. Happy Endings

IN – But it again depends on the story and setting of the book. Sometimes, you just enjoy a little bit of heartbreak at the end, don’t you?

14. Plot Points That Only Converge At The End

IN – This keeps the reader involved in your story. When everything unravels fast, it’s getting boring and less intriguing. This is especially the case for thrillers. Lately, I find those less exciting because they are so simple? I don’t know. But I hardly have been hooked to a thriller in the past years.

15. Detailed Magic Systems

IN – Magic systems can be very complicated and when they aren’t explained well it’s hard to connect to the book. Personally, I struggled a lot with the magic systems in Legendborn and The Gilded Wolves. I just couldn’t get the hang of them and therefore barely understood the story. No need to say that I didn’t continue both series.

16. Classic Fantasy Races

IN – Fantasy gets very diverse as well these days, especially YA fantasy. There is still room for the classic characters and that’s great.

17. Unreliable Narrators

OUT – I don’t read this type of I guess.

18. Evil Protagonists

IN – Doesn’t this trope make a story even more interesting?

19. The Chosen One

IN/OUT – I’m a little on the fence for this one. We’ve seen this trope a lot in previous years, so therefore I’d say OUT. but, these stories can be interesting too and therefore I’d say IN.

20. When The Protagonist Dies

OUT – Can protagonists deserve a happy ending? When they die, there should be a different type of narrator though.

21. Really Long Chapters

OUT – They can make a story dragging and provide the readers with less cliffhangers which leads to the danger of a story not being intriguing enough.

22. French Flaps

OUT – I really don’t know what they are LOL.

23. Deckled Edges

OUT – Again, what are these?

24. Signed Copies By The Author

OUT – And this is a very personal thing, but I can’t read physical copies so they don’t add much for me. But, it’s an IN for the people who actually can read them.

25. Dog-Earing Pages

OUT – I don’t have this problem LOL.

26. Chapter Titles Instead Of Numbers

OUT – I’d rather have a chapter with number and title or just a number. I don’t like chapters just having a title because they confuse me a lot. This is because I use the VoiceOver on the iPad to read my books and when it reads continuously it’s hard to tell whether you’ve started a new chapter or not.

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So, theae are my answers! I tag the following bloggers:

Kristi @ Confessions of a YA Reader | Celeste @ A Literary Escape | Dini @ Dini Panda REads | Candyce & Isabelle @ The Book Dutchesses | Leslie @ Books Are The New Black