The aim of this paper is to shed light on the nature of the topics of the reading passages in ELT coursebooks. To find out the content of the topics, a total number of 15 ELT coursebooks are studied by using both quantitative and qualitative measures. The discrepancies found are discussed and recommendations are made to underline the importance of topic selection in any second and foreign language teaching classroom. As for conclusion, English language teachers are invited to consider issues related to the topic selection processes in their coursebooks as they assess, choose or use them.