Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.
I’m usually not the best with things like ‘unpopular’ opinions, because I’m never totally sure if it really is unpopular or I’ve just missed people expressing the same ideas! I won’t be doing a full top ten for this, but let’s see how many I can think of…
Unpopular Bookish Opinions
Book Communities Rely Too Much on Big Names
This is something that has long bugged me, and I don’t just mean author names. It’s something that seems to hit a lot of these communities, whether it’s Horror on Twitter or generally BookTok/bookish areas on other social media. It feels like as a collective, we often put these people on pedestals, and give them a huge amount of influence. This isn’t just on readers or just on authors or just on etc etc etc, but we’ve seen it recently on a huge scale (a particular British Fantasy author, or what about that OTHER British fantasy author…) but it hits ‘lower ranks’ just as easily, and it gives them a huge amount of protection when it comes to their behaviour.
Books Should, At Times, Make You Uncomfortable
Books remain one of the best ways to expose yourself to new ideas. And they’re failing if you never, ever read something that makes you just a tiny bit uncomfortable. I’m not saying readers should seek out books that will trigger them, and trigger and content warnings are one of the best tools out there for all parties, but I find that books that are more nuanced, less clear-cut, that contain morally grey characters who see themselves as ‘doing the right thing’, get so much pushback. Of course, we don’t like to be uncomfortable, but we should step outside our comfort zone from time to time, and seek out both fiction and non-fiction that challenges us.
In Defence of ‘Overrated’ Books
I get it – it’s frustrating to see books you’ve really loved and enjoyed get ignored in favour of books that, if you’re a constant reader, might come across as cliché and poorly written. I’m not saying they’re not, but I think it’s worth understanding why these books appeal, while also acknowledging that some books get to this position because of the publisher. It’s frustrating, but I think it’s also worth being aware that a lot of people picking up these kind of books aren’t huge readers or book bloggers or diehard fantasy/romance readers – they appeal to the general public. They might hear about these books from TikTok, but although it’s an annoyance, the best thing we can do is try to boost the books we’ve enjoyed and focusing on them, rather than spending time wallowing in “why is this a success and this book isn’t”. Sometimes it really is a bolt of lightening, other times it’s not, and it is worth interrogating a lot of aspects around them, but unfortunately, the writing – whether we think of it as poor or not – is often easily accessible and easily consumed, drawing in people who wouldn’t normally pick these up.
Indie Books and Trends
Often, when a trend hits the mainstream and becomes pretty popular – sometimes stretching into film and TV and exposing it to even more people – I often see people wondering where it came from, or trying to pinpoint the ‘origin’. Honestly, so often I see these trends start in indie, move into trad publishing, then shift into something bigger. And it’s really fun to see it unfold!
I’m not entirely sure how popular/unpopular these are, but guarantee now I’ve written this I’ll think of more! Maybe I should start making a note of them for future lists…
What are some of your unpopular bookish opinions? Feel free to share or point me towards your own posts!
Unwrapping Words 
Nice way of using this prompt!
Mine: https://cathysreadingbonanza.wordpress.com/2025/04/14/top-ten-tuesday-divergent-bookish-opinions/
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Thank you!
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