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They don't tend to be in genres that interest me. I don't specifically avoid NYT bestsellers, but they're not often recommended to me. I won't pay new prices for them (nor deal with DRM, which means I won't be reading any of them as ebooks), and the vast majority drop into obscurity as soon as they're not on the charts anymore.
They tend to be very mainstream. Either very much about the kinds of people and situations that I spend a lot of effort in my life avoiding, or about situations I find much more interesting--from the perspective of people I'd think of as boring & narrow-minded. Or worse, fascinating topics distorted & mangled by the attempt to keep them within mainstream interest ranges.
They're not all like that; some stand out as good reads that stay with me. (Foucault's Pendulum. Anything by Bujold. American Gods. Other SF/F books.) Mainly, it's that the NYT Bestseller list is a warning flag of "don't bother reading this unless I get a recommendation from another source." Recs from other sources I trust that *also* make the NYT list are likely to be good; I'm not such an elitist that I think popular appeal means I won't like it. I just know that "my tastes" and "strong popular appeal" has a very small overlap.
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