5 Types of Books You Can Skip Reading
The types of books I would never read again in my life
Not all that is written is meant to be read.
This is one of the most important lessons I’ve learned from my reading endeavors. When my father introduced me to the world of reading in my teenage years, my shelf was a clean slate. As I began to grow as a reader, I learned to prune my attention to good books. In doing so, the first step was to segregate, from the rest, the kind of books I absolutely would never think of reading again.
Sure reading is a hobby to inculcate. But what you read holds as much value as whether you choose to read or not.
In this article, I list down 5 types of books I’ve read and found unworthy of my reading time for reasons I’ve elucidated below. If you too are looking for a worthwhile read, you must avoid all these books at all costs.
1. Template Romance Novels
It is easy to fall prey to these. You’ll find ample of such novels by amateur authors in the market. The Indian bookstores are stacked with these. I’ve mostly seen first-time readers carrying them around. Perhaps they find these an easy read for familiarity which draws them in. I too fell for the same bait. On reading them, however, I realized they had no value to offer me whatsoever as a reader. My time reading them was a waste.
For if I’d read one of them, then I’d read them all. All their storyline quintessentially revolves around a textbook definition of cinematic characters: a rich guy meets and falls in love -by chance- with a meek girl (or sometimes the other way around). Tumultuous ups and downs trouble their mismatched yet meant-to-be relationship. This “mismatch” forms the basis of the entire storyline and the looming climax. Throw in some poorly written intimate scenes, some cliched romantic dialogues, and the commonplace barriers in a relationship: opposing families, skewed financial conditions, a third wheel. And bam! You’ve got yourself one of these books.
No matter how easy I wanted to go with books, I’m never falling for one of these again
Read This Instead
If you do want to read light-hearted romance novels, you might want to try Sophie Kinsella’s books. Super cheesy, yet well-written, these books will transport you into the pretty pink world you’ve been yearning for. Her “Can You Keep a Secret?” was an instant hit with me. You could also go for timeless romance classics, the likes of “P.S. I Love You” or Nicholas Sparks’ books. These books always have a premise outside of conventional love or a deeper concept that goes beyond carnal desires.
2. Run-of-the-mill Self-Help Books
I hold two unfailing beliefs for self-help books which I extend to real life as well:
- Unless the writer or the proponent of the self-help advice hails from the same background as me, I cannot quite extend their advice and learnings to myself.
- If they have not been practising what they preach for a significant time now, I should not be taking their word for it.
I hold these beliefs dear ever since I read a fat loss book by a celebrity dietitian. In it, she had documented an actress’ fat-to-fit journey. The book was filled with practices far out of reach of a common, working woman like me. Most of her “free" advice did not ring beyond “Be Persistent”. I could not live off the diet recommended in the book nor could I afford a private dietitian, something she had stressed upon so many times throughout the book. The book was clearly written with a rich audience in mind. And with the sole aim of selling her paid services.
The book did end up teaching me a few things about self-help books though:
- It is easy to pen down self-help books. But the good ones are those that benefit most readers irrespective of who they are or where they come from.
- Everybody loves to preach. Hence, you should listen to only those that have practised their advice and failed multiple times before starting to preach about it.
- Only read self-help books if you can relate to the author and feel that you can trust them. If you don’t believe their words, your time spent reading is as good as wasted.
Read This Instead
Pick a timeless self-help book if you’re unsure in this genre. These are the unfailing ones. The ones most people have relied on consistently to improve their lives. The first of my self-help books was Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, and William Zinsser’s “On Writing Well”. After reading these from the connoisseurs of self-help themselves, I confidently jumped on to Jen Sincero or Mark Manson or even a lesser-known self-help book from lesser-known local authors. Because by then, I knew how self-help worked and could easily judge a few pages into the book whether the self-help tips from it would benefit me.
3. Poorly Written Thrillers
Imagine turning about 100 pages of a book to discover a sudden supernatural angle in a series of humane murders. I’ve never been more disappointed with a thriller. There were hardly any 'thrilling’ moments in it. The only scenes I remember from the book are the protagonist mercilessly humping his wife against the wall on their wedding night and my sheer disappointment on having read the entire climax without realizing it. Not the things you’d want to take back from a thriller, do you?
Being an avid thriller reader and movie-watcher since childhood, I’m always on the lookout for an entertaining thriller book. Agatha Christie is my favourite thriller writer of all time. It is through her books and Alfred Hitchcock’s movies that I’ve learned of the two central components in any thriller novel: the writing premise and the climax. A third leg is a harmony between the two. Poorly written thriller novels lack one or more or all of these, much like the disappointing novel I’ve mentioned above.
Read This Instead
Writing good thriller and mystery novels is hard. Finding one that lives up to your expectations is even harder these days. That’s why I find myself going back to Agatha Christie time and again for my dose of murder mysteries. In modern times, Paula Hawkins’ “The Girl on the Train”, Stieg Larsson’s’ “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”, and Rachel Caine’s “Stillhouse Lake” are some novels that have whetted my appetite for a good thriller read.
If you’re looking to read a quality thriller, you should first familiarise yourself with their premise by reading seasoned authors first. Once you’re equipped with this knack, you can then safely pick from a lot of the newer authors in the genre without any fear of falling for a poorly written thriller.
4. Poorly Edited Stories
I was once reading a book by an amateur author I’d been following for quite some time now. His intriguing background and his promising TEDx speech had quelled me enough to buy one of his books and give it a read. Albeit for different reasons, the book lived up to its promise of creating an unforgettable experience for the reader. For when I was reading it, I ended up spending one hour searching the meaning of the phrase “a litde”. Imagine my horror when it turned out to be a typo for “a little”. So much for proofreading, huh? I had spent not more than 50 cents on the book and I still regret buying it.
If there’s one thing that every writer worth his salt knows, its that a reader takes precious time out of their busy lives to read what they’ve written. To make the reader work through anything, be it the plot, or the characters or even the writing itself is nothing short of a misdeed. A poorly written book is a crime in its own right.
Read This Instead
The best thing about poorly typed and badly proofread books is that no one comes to like them. You’ll usually find them rated low on all book review sites (lest the authors buy reviews). Instead of falling for this fallacy, support local authors and friends with genuine good reviews.
5. Books Out of Your Interest Radar
I remember attempting to read Carl Ubbelohde’s “The American Colonies and the British Empire, 1607–1766”. It was after five unsuccessful attempts spanning a period of over one year that I dropped it altogether. The same goes for Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” or even his simpler works for that matter. Although I knew the importance of widening my horizons as a reader, I couldn’t bring myself to read these books. There’s nothing wrong with them per se, they’re celebrated books in their own genre. It’s just that I could never mend my ways with them. This taught me yet another important lesson in reading: I wasn’t obliged to read books I had zero interest in. This way, I was sparing myself the time wasted in reading an uninteresting book and the author of being at the receiving end of criticism from someone who didn’t understand those books they’d written.
Read This Instead
If you’re venturing into new genres in reading, a short, easy-going book from a seasoned author is always a safe bet. If you can read through it, read a few more books by the same author or a different author of a similar kind. Once you’ve eased yourself into the genre, delve deeper into such books, including those by newbie authors. This is a failsafe way of venturing into newer reading genres without wasting much of your time with books that don’t go well with you.
Also, you must remember that if you don’t like a book, there is no harm in stopping reading it instead of wasting your time. Not all genres are meant for you. You are not meant for all genres.
Getting Back on Track with Quality Reading
If you’ve ever caught yourself enjoying the guilty pleasure of indulging in any of the above genres, you’re in the same boat as me. Over the years as became cognizant of my reading habits and created for myself a Goodreads account, I was shocked to see the kind of books the world was adding to their treasure trove and the kind of books I was dabbling in. At the end of three years of supposed “reading”, I had read and re-read some of these books multiple times! And yet I was nowhere near in intellect and knowledge compared to my peers. It was then that, a few years ago, I forbade myself from reading these books, dumped them in the back of my attic one fine day, and picked a few good ones from the list.
It’s been four years since I have been back to reading quality books all over again. I have never felt more satisfied with my reading experience.
A Quick Help to Sort Out Worthy Books from the Lot
I have come to use the below practice to determine a books’ worth. Whenever you pick your next book, ask yourself the following questions:
- What new am I going to learn from this book?
Even if the answer lies in a timeless quote, you should go ahead.
2. Is the book well-written?
If the author has written the book in a fluff, commonplace language with no underlying meaning, you might want to skip it.
3. Can I write a unique review of this book?
Every day, tens of people review the same book on Goodreads. The thing with quality books is: every reader takes back a different version, no matter how simple the story is. Hence, if you can write a unique review for the book, offer a new perspective perhaps, you should go for it.
The Bottom Line
Read if you will.
Read if you must.
But you’d rather not reading something that adds no value to your life.
In the words of Mokokoma Mokhonoana,
“We are lucky to die without having read some books, and without having heard some songs.”
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