A friend asked me the other day if I'd read ... well, let's just call it "Book X", and I jokingly said that I had not, nor had I any intention of so doing, and in fact Book X was firmly on my Never To Be Read pile. I'm not going to name it here for fear of offending a member of the family who is rather keen on it and who, rightly, thinks I should not judge a book by its cover, as it were, or in this case by the excerpts of the text (gleaned from the internet) which another member of the family has been reading out loud to illustrate what makes Book X the literary work it is.
Of course, I'm talking about a bit of good-natured family teasing here, and naturally, if given the book for review, say, I'd approach it as I do all others with an open mind and in the hope of finding something good. But as most of us have To Be Read piles and lengthy wishlists from which we augment them, I wondered if anyone had a Never To Be Read pile - probably not a physical one, but a mental list of books they really do not want to read? Say your book group chose the despised volume, would you ask to be excused that month?!
Perhaps there are whole genres we steer clear of, writers we'd rather avoid (remember the infamous Whipple line*?), or just books whose reputation puts us off to such a degree that we wouldn't touch them with the proverbial bargepole. Often these strong dislikes are quite irrational, and they are a matter of personal taste rather than objective criticism, but still we have them. How about you? Anything on your NTBR pile?
*For the avoidance of doubt, I am steadfastly pro-Whipple!
