Are there any topics/tropes/genres that you actively avoid reading about?

WW2

Also, any book about a group of siblings who have grown apart and live very different lives as adults, but are forced to come back to the ramshackle family home when their mother dies. I feel like I encounter variations of this blurb over and over again, and it's always an instant no from me.

That's three of us championing Tchaikovsky in one thread!

I made the mistake of being convinced that the reviews couldn't be that wrong. Her remaining books will continue to remain! At least Station was just boring and ridiculous. Sea of Tranquility was massively annoying.

I like Tchaikovsky's books a great deal and he is also a "proper old fashioned" SF writer in the time he gives to fans at events.

ChickLit. Once you have seen the formula, you can't unsee it.
MiseryPorn. Why would you? I've read 'proper' MisLit (for example If this is a man) but MiseryPorn is a no. You can add in horror and any other unpleasantness-for-the-sake-of-it here.
Magical Realism i.e. an ordinary story with nonsense thrown in. I get a Dr Spock response ("illogical!"). I can enjoy full-blown fantasy but not irrationality.
Action Men macho; "with one bound he was free"; women are just there as props, all that. Ugh, so shallow.
I'm not very good with suspense these days. I find myself thinking, "if you've got something to say then for goodness sake get on with it. Stop wasting my time."
But also, and contrarily, short stories. I want something from a book and a short story seldom has enough depth for me. I can cope with the odd short story but not a whole book of them.
Lastly, prize-winners. Judging panels seem to be desperate to find new, shocking, different, blah, blah, blah subjects and the quality of the writing is almost irrelevant. Double-negative points for prize-winners who throw SPAG out of the window.

Dystopian literature - I like my novels in the past or the here and now. I find it deeply unsettling. No idea why.

Oh I loved Station 11! I hate sci fi though, and didn’t really see it as that, more (ultimately quite hopeful and redemptive) speculative fiction.

I don’t read fantasy, historical fiction (except Wolf Hall!), thrillers, misery memoirs or anything involving child sex abuse (except A Little Life, by accident. Ugh.)

My MiL’s answer to this question, which she has come out with repeatedly, unprompted, is that she “doesn’t like American writers”. Which, you know, is a point of view…🙄

Have always been a prolific reader and was reading adult horror at around 12+ .
Stephen King , James Herbert etc.
Don't read any horror or science fiction at all now.

At one point, I would have said dystopian - I’m the sort of person that turns of the news and hates anything depressing. However, read one by accident and actually quite like them now.

This is my exact list too.

I only read the yawnfest Station 11 because I learn from my mistakes

The world ends, all services cease, no more clean water and no more food deliveries to supermarkets, and all those city people somehow spend little to no time feeding themselves snd have all their day to moan about how much they miss air-conditioning and curate "museums" of now-dead tech like mobile phones. From Yugoslavia to Somalia, we have all seen that people revert back to animals the second law and order breaks down and yet these dimwits are just... bored in an airport.

I just finished Adrian Tchaikovsky's mind-blowing Children of Time and I'm now half way through its sequel Children of Ruin. Anyone who thinks Emily St John Mandel writes great SF should try their hand at these books and then compare them to the laughably childish effort that is Station 11.

This is a good question!

I am not interested in Greek or Roman mythology.
Roman, Egyptian history.
Sexual and graphic violence
Sci fi or fantasy - with the exception of Harry Potter.

@CoteDAzur

Rubbish Sci-Fi written by people who should just write chick lit - Learn something about science, technology, and other subjects you plan to write about, because you clearly know nothing. Emily St John Mandel, I'm looking at you

Would that be the yawnfest Station Eleven or the "I wanna be David Mitchell" Sea of Tranquility?

I won't be giving Mandel a third attempt and am bemused by the reviews and prizes.

Plenty of the above but also I came to the conclusion anything that has tonnes of one line reviews all over the covers; front, back and also inside and out.

Also, now try to avoid things with descriptions of sex; it (almost) never adds to the plot. Not prudish, just feels "sex sells" cynical. However, it's usually too late before I've managed to avoid it.

Also anything where the blurb asks stupid questions.
Will Jane and John find love together?
Can Matilda overcome her background to find happiness?

Anything described as heartwarming is an immediate no for me.

Chick lit and murder mystery.

Stuck in a fantasy hole at the moment. Aside from Robin Hobb I'm thinking the quality of more recent fantasy is a bit fanfiction - although I've never read any. And too much badly written sex.

Misery porn ie about abuse especially abusive childhoods
Horror
Chick lit
Violent thrillers - you can usually tell by the title and/or cover
Thrillers involving kidnapping and/or death of children
Romance (except Jane Austen) - don't mind if part of the story but not the point of it
Anything with vampires, werewolves or faeries

The Treatment is one of the most disturbing books I've ever read. I did finish it because I needed closure, probably odd logic but I couldn't leave it unfinished with those pictures in my head IYSWIM.

I don't read sci-fi, espionage, misery lit, Westerns, Wilbur Smith-style adventures, most fantasy (don't mind Tolkein or Pratchett's satire of the genre), 'classic' literature written by macho types like Hemingway.

chick-lit

cosy books like The Hundred Year Old Man. The Keeper of Lost Things , Sally Red Shoes etc

stuff about genies and dragons

supernatural content (I read To the Devil a Daughter far too young and it's freaked me out ever since)

child abuse

dementia - don't need reminding how awful it is

misery lit in general

spy fiction - so much double- and triple-crossing I just don't care any more

I'm also weary of time-slip novels. The French Lieutenant's Woman was innovative but it's become lazy and overdone now

and I detest novels written in the present tense. It's not happening now. You're reading about it so it must be in the past.

I agree - 80% of what I read is by women now. There are exceptions - Adrian Tchaikovsky is an excellent example with his brilliant science fiction books.

Crime involving cruelty to animals and children. I once read this awful book by Mo Hayder, The treatment. It was awful, I can’t understand why anyone would write such a book. A woman! It describes terrible acts of peadophilia while the father of the child must watch…. I can’t believe people read this stuff for entertainment… i’m not for banning books but this one must be behind bars. It made me want to throw up.

Chick lit - I don't care about your little dramas with your friends and I don't care about your shopping.

Kidnapped and/or abused children - No.

Misery lit - Why would I want to spend hours reading about abused orphans going hungry on the streets?

Rubbish Sci-Fi written by people who should just write chick lit - Learn something about science, technology, and other subjects you plan to write about, because you clearly know nothing. Emily St John Mandel, I'm looking at you.

Old, badly written fiction with oddly-behaving characters speaking and acting in ways that nobody in their right mind would - Nevil Shute's On the Beach comes to mind.

Non-fiction books by pompous "thinkers" who claim to predict our future as a species, such as Yuval "There will be no more wars because they are no longer economically viable" Harari

Bestselling books that are only slightly above chick lit, often about some current issue or popular grievance, written predominantly for a female reader base - examples: 1000 Splendid Suns, anything by Jojo Moyes, Sophie Kinsella et al.

Romance - Just no.

So-called "Women's fiction" with colorfully drawn multi-color covers and handwritten fonts are to avoid, especially if they are called Some Man With A Profession's Female Relative à la The Baker's Wife, The Hangman's Daughter...

I'm quite fussy probably.
I wouldn't read cowboy or romantic man stories either, probably. I like quirky weirdness, though.

Me too. Also graphic violence & misery memoirs, as mentioned upthread.

I’ve been known to leave a book on the tube / bus if it has references to messy eaters in it. Instant ick.

I have read one book ever where it was an accounting fraud, found by an auditor. There should be more!

I avoid anything historical (though enjoy little women). Any sci fi or fantasy stuff. Misery memoirs too.

Nice crime dramas for me.