Top Ten Tuesdays: Trends

10 Trends I'd Love to See More/Less Of

From The Broke and the Bookish, a weekly meme of top tens! This week was really fun as I love to bs about trends in books. Unfortunately I could only think of six trends I wanted more of, and two that I wanted less of!

I want more:

1. Books covers like this:

Or like this:

I like the stark, simple color scheme and the decorative borders...love.

2. Creative narrative styles...and I am thinking of an older book here, Jane Yolen's Sister Light, Sister Dark. Ballads? Anthropology essays? Yes please include them in my young adult fantasy.

3. If paranormal romance in young adult novels must continue to dominate I want to see more variety! Vampires and werewolves (and fairies) have been done to death. I wouldn't mind some mummies, zombies, selkies, hobgoblins, or whathaveyou. Maybe they aren't as "sexy" as a sparkly vampire or buff werewolf, but they would be novel.

4. New Weird.

5. More fairy tale retellings! Mythology can fit in here too. I know there is a YA retelling of Persephone (Abandon by Meg Cabot) that's calling to me. Am I the only one who isn't sick of this trend?

6. Illustrations in "grown up" books, like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or Leviathon. I LOVED the illustrations. I fully support this trend.

Less of:

1. Young adult "paranormal romance" in the vein of Twilight....once was enough. While some are quite good, most are merely capitalizing on a newly realized market and...suck.

2. Beheaded bodies on book covers. I don't get it, and find it mildly disturbing.