Because it's good to get all the annoyances out, before the new beginning...
Book-trends that can stay in the twenty-tens...
Glorification of (mental) health problems in YA. Yes, I’m talking to you Thirteen Reasons Why, The Fault in Our Stars, All the Bright Places, and many others. If you’re going to cover horrific, life altering illnesses, please do so, but not in the glamourized Hollywood version so often portrayed.
Author-/reviewer-fights, cancel-culture and any type of drama on Social Media. why don’t we all unite behind the fact that we love books, and don’t fight amongst ourselves, okay?
On a similar note: the entirety of J.K. Rowling’s twitter…
FORCED DIVERSITY No… Just no. You are doing a disservice to the very cause you’re trying to support by placing cardboard-cut-out-token-minorities in your novel, only to appeal to a politically correct audience. Diversity is about more than skincolour, bodily differences, sexuality, religion etc.: it’s about differences in people. All people, no matter all the aforementioned factors. Start by writing actual interesting characters. If you surround yourself with actual interesting and varied humans in real life, “diversity” might become a second nature instead of a forced box to tick on your way to a publisher.
Continuing a completed series years down the line, for no other reason that that that golden goose has some more eggs left to pop out. If you’ve completed your masterpiece series with the ending you planned for it: stick to it and know when to leave the past in the past.
Competetive reading This is one I plan on leaving behind myself. Books were made for entertainment, education and sometimes artistic purposes; never for competitive ones. Let's stop putting pressure on ourselves by pledging to read 150 books in a year, and just enjoy what we read instead of how much/how fast we did so.
“The Girl/Woman in the X…” Please come up with more creative titles, because I cannot distinguish my domestic thrillers anymore…
Those tiny-print, stiff mass-market paperbacks that you have to break the spine every 10 pages in order to read them. You know who you are: you should have stayed in the nineties if it were up to me.
Booktrends that can come along into the twenties.
Community engagement Goodreads, booktube, booktwitter and other social media might have been the source of drama, it has also been the source of unity, new friendships and a way to connect over a book with readers from all over the world. I still stand behind the fact that Goodreads is the most wholesome social medium I’ve ever joined, whether that might have to do with the friends I have on there, or the platform as a whole. Either way: thanks you Goodreads friends for being amazing.
Stunning bookcovers I know it’s superficial, but I love that publishers are taking the opportunity to treat bookcovers as the pieces of art they are nowadays.
Taking chances In the past few years, we’ve been seeing authors get a lot more creative and experimental again, instead of writing the same thing over and over again like at the beginning of the decade. Keep up the originality!
Support of up and coming new authors, from all different backgrounds and histories.
The rise of novels in other formats than the traditional paper-and-ink book. Audiobooks, e-books, graphic novels, mixed media: I’m here for it all. The more variety in ways to consume however, the more chance there’s something out there for everybody.
The conviction that, no matter how prevalent audiobooks, ebooks and tv-shows get, the traditional paper book will always hold a special type of magic and will/should never be replaced. Here’s to another amazing decade of reading, and many yet to come.
