Happy Tuesday everyone! Welcome to my favorite blogging day of the week!

Kicking things off with Teaser Tuesday, hosted by the lovely MizB from “Should Be Reading.” Here’s how to play along:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

“You don’t understand, Harry, nobody could understand unless they have lived with goblins. To a goblin, the rightful and true master of any object is the maker, not the purchaser. All goblin-made objects are, in goblin eyes, rightfully theirs.”

– Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

Bonus points if you can tell who’s speaking there. 🙂 Also, this should be my last Harry Potter teaser, since I will finish the series this week. Sigh. It’s been fun!

This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by “The Broke and the Bookish,” is a little tricky for me. Today we are talking about the words or topics that will make you avoid a book. The thing is – I’ll read just about anything. I’m not that picky. I’ll give anything a try. So to be fair, I did some snooping on some other peoples lists to get ideas because, for the most part, I was drawing a blank.

Top Ten (or Seven) Words/Topics That Will Make You NOT pick up a book

1. Romance – Don’t get me wrong – I like love. I do. And I like seeing a good romantic subplot running through my stories. But if the book is about nothing but the ups and downs of someone’s relationship, it starts to get a little bit boring to me.

2. Religion – This one could be taken the wrong way. Again, I don’t mind if there is a character in a book who is religious. What I don’t like are books that get really preachy about it. And it doesn’t matter which religion it is. It could even be a made-up religion in a fantasy book. As soon as you start lecturing me, I start to loose interest.

3. Chick-Lit – I won’t even go into how offensive I find this term, but the light fluffy stuff that has little to no substance in it, that’s written strictly because some author thinks that clothes and makeup and men are all women are interested in . . . yeah, I think you understand why I’m not a fan.

4. “The Next . . .” – I do get tired of hearing people talk about a book like, “It’s the next Harry Potter!” Or “It’s the next Twilight!” (please, just, no) Quit trying to compare your book to someone else’s! Especially since you will probably A). get my expectations up and then disappoint me (like my first example), or B). turn me off completely from your work (like my second example).

5. Fathers – Particularly anything where something bad happens to a father or father figure. My dad died several years ago and I’m still pretty sensitive to this topic. Do you want me to be a crying bundle of feelings? No? Then let’s move on.

6. Terminal Illness – I’ve watched several friends and family members loose their battles with cancer and it’s painful enough. I don’t want to read about it. I made it through The Fault in Our Stars purely out of loyalty to John Green, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to re-read it. I wasn’t right for days.

7. Erotica – This one is slightly related to Romance, in that I need more than this. I’m not opposed to a well written sex scene, but that can’t be all the book is about. It just gets boring.

Please leave your links for teasers and top ten lists in comments! Also, don’t forget to vote for the next part of Heritage (see yesterday’s post if you don’t know what I’m talking about).