I’ve always just tried to avoid books with graphic sex scenes, or shrugged and zipped past the occasional unexpected one. Now I boycott them; and I am dying to tell you why.

There are a few reasons: TMI, annoying, unrealistic, unnecessary, unbelievable, disappointing. And it doesn’t help that I read many books and now little aggravations  start to become big ones.

Too Much Information. My friends don’t give me graphic details about their sex  life, in fact they don’t give me any details at all (except maybe in extenuating circumstances)  nor do I want them to. Books are my good friends, I don’t want to know all the minute details of their intimate encounters.

Annoying. Like commercials during your favorite movie. Highly annoying. Especially when the obligatory scene has nothing to do with the story.

Unrealistic. In most cases, the scene starts with them frantically tearing off each other’s clothes and then it goes on and on, for pages, and pages, and pages.

Unnecessary. In most cases, if you asked if this scene was essential to the story, the answer would be no. Be ruthless, if it doesn’t cause the story to fall apart, it needs to go.

Unbelievable. A mystery/thriller comes to mind when I think about unbelievable. Unfulfilled  raging hormones start early in the story and make themselves known to the reader every page or two. Believable characters wouldn’t allow this to go on, the distraction could get them killed.

Disappointing. An awesome love story seemed to finish with a beautiful wedding and was lining up to be my favorite book of the week.  The obligatory sex scene was tacked on at the end and destroyed everything the author had going.

One other thing tipping the scales for me has been the computer generating book suggestions. The suggestions have been less and less like the kind of book I wanted and more and more like the kind of book they were trying to push. I couldn’t figure out how to change that.

So, what does my boycott look like? I stay away from main stream romance. So far it’s working for me, I still seem to find more than enough good books to read.

Thanks for letting me rant. I’m not feeling nearly as steamed as I was a couple of days ago when I started writing this piece, but that can change. BookBub had a cartoon the other day that says it perfectly.  A man is reading in bed and with disgust  sends the book sailing out the second story window. The caption says “The way you feel when they kill off your favorite character”.

It’s too bad I’m reading ebooks! It’s just not the same 🙂

One of my favorite romances this year was The Mountain Between Us Charles Martin. It will be out soon as a movie and looks like it will be as good as the book. The scenery is awesome, it was filmed in Canada’s rugged Rocky Mountains. Check it out if you haven’t already. There are lots of great trailers and interviews on line.

Next time there will be a new list of books.

In the meantime, Happy reading!