What's your pet hate in books?

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Yes, actually, to go on about ghastly-childhood books, that bit of blurb I quoted below has a lead-in (from Amazon website) which says ...

"There are shelves of memoirs about overcoming the death of a parent, childhood abuse, rape, drug addiction, miscarriage, alcoholism, hustling, near-death injuries, drug dealing, prostitution or homelessness. XXX survived all these things before she?d even turned twenty. And that?s when things got interesting."

I find that last, titillating, bit quite repulsive.

sebastian faulks is overrated. i am sure he writes with the stirring film track playing in the background. 'she walked into the room wearing a soft cashmere authentic 1940's twinset and admired his thornproof tweeds'.

any irish angsty moustachioed nuns beating young woman.

booker prize winners but i am probably just jealous.

Agree with rubbish endings (Carole whatshername should have been shot for the end of Mary Swann).
Books where the heroine is having a 'bad' time, but still wears prada and in the end despite being a complete ar8e all her friedns still love her.
Tony Parsons
Kathy Lette (only so many puns a girl can take....)
Spelling mistakes - for god sake don't proof readers exist any more?
Harry Potter
Aga Sagas
Middle life crisis books - husband leaves for younger model blah blah, she ends up shagging the gardener
'My Terrible childhood' - what is this all about? It has become a whole genre and will doubtless have its own section in Waterstones soon....

curious incident .. was like a breath of fresh air to read...

just recently finished Midnight in garden of good and evil which i really enjoyed

Califrau oops! should read the whole thread before I add...but so agree with you!

..and it was all a dream...crikey our teachers made us stand in the corner for that cop out!

realising the plot has been stolen from somewhere else...
we got detention for that one

Agree with you calif on the stupid next book chapter at the end.SO bloody annoying when you're tucked up in bed and then realise you've finished the effing book and have to trek downstairs to find something else to read.

Any book about a traumatic childhood,Angela's Ashes was enough for me.

Chick lit of any kind,and this new "isn't it funny to be a mum" kind of book ...vomit!

Too much descriptive flowery prose bores the pants off me.

I can't stand the hype! The Da Vinci Code was talked about so much, about how well it was written, what a good plot it was, how clever it was, etc etc. Then, imo, it turned out to be predictable and boring. Then, just to add to that, they made the film, which was also crap!

Personally I really enjoyed The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.

lazy writing e.g. coincidences taking the place of proper plot

printed on cheap paper

children's books with 'adult' covers - FFS

molesworth..the americans publish on loo roll imo..
in my publishing days we soooo looked down on the NY office, production wise we were just far superior..

then supermarkets started to sell books
the slipppery slops slope...

hate
chick lit
bridget jones gave me the dry boak
tv spin offs

haven't read any of these authors mentioned so i guess i am a pretty good judge of a book by its cover!

The words 'not unkindly' WHY can they not just put kindly? Do they have a word count that extra 'not' helps with?

Also, when they have the first chapter of their next book in the back, but you don't realise it has and you settle down to read the end, and it is only two pages and you think..."is that it?"

Too many similes. Use a metaphor. Or just tell it like it is, ffs. (Gave up on Kathy Reichs for this reason.)

Franca... come and talk to me about Slataper... (I thought I was the only person in the world who liked him!)

Crap endings for me too. All the anticlimax, then, it all falls flat on it's face.

lol again

DW has shelves full of it, that's why! I sometimes pick one out and look through it to see how long I can go before I want to kill myself. I'm glad I had no sharp objects to hand with that bloody "Shopaholic" woman. And Jenny f*cking Colgate. Blurgh.

lol lol

you're both probably right, that kind of thing. They're all called Henrietta and make jam and it's always a hot summer and bleargh....

Unquiet,yo are unsettling familiar with crap women's fiction.Sydney Sheldon has just died (no more crap from him then thank God)

I remember my friend sneering at her spouse and delivering the ultimate putdown
'Mike thinks that Sydney Sheldon is a good read!'

Oh how we sniggered.

Judy Astley, Kbear?

Raised gold lettering, LOL - are there that many of them now? they used to be popular in the 80s - Judith Krantz and Sidney Sheldon and all that.

Another one that bugs me is that the slightest little thing sends people off into "reveries" about their childhood. They stand in doorways and think/remember, or sit on buses and have very detailed flashbacks in chronological order.

lol Kbear

Surely Joanna Trollope?

Anything with the words Based on a true story on the front or back covers.
Bad dialogue.