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

[TheArtOfBookCollecting]

I can't bear anything with animal cruelty/suffering in it. I've given up on many books because of that though occasionally if the book is good enough, and it isn't a recurring theme, I'll just skip that part and continue.

I also really can't bear to read anything relating to witch hunting. It makes me feel so ill to think about it.

I'm also not a fan of romance for the sake of romance itself. If there's some pressing reason for them to be together or if they've been through a lot as a couple then I don't mind but otherwise I tend to avoid romance.

No judgement. Each to their own but I'm curious to know which subjects/genres you make a habit of avoiding?

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.

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 my exact list too.

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.

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.

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…🙄

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

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.

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.

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

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.