I don't want to ruin every book you're going to read from now, but have you noticed they all have the word

Have you noticed that in the Harry Potter books Hermione says everything 'shrilly'?

The book I just finished featured:

1. detritus
2. padding (it was a legit use)
3. ‘a Mumsnet look’

Grips are always "vice" or "vise" like and moons are almost always gibbous.

You might like this.

boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=542130

Sweat slicked x2 in chapter 1, and padded in chapter 2. Not sure I can continue with the book I just downloaded.

Haven't RTFT yet. But Alexandra Potter always has her characters musing. Every time they think something, it's;

" 'the sky is blue', I muse, looking at the sky"

Gah! Stop bloody musing.

Other than that I love her books

No I’m not a fascist, just not all that keen (And it was on Kindle)

The Way I Found Her by Rose Tremain, which is super, is a bit of a Go-Between rip off with a long hot summer, in Paris, and the characters are British so they relish this sense of another world.

Sounds like your summer of 2016 was indeed a (very) long, hot summer then?!

did you burn it?

Yes she succeeded in making me feel claustrophobic and bored, if that was the idea She sets the scene elaborately, unfortunately it was the scene for an awful lot of nonsense. It was the longest short book I’ve ever read, destroyed my summer holiday 2016 and I’ll never forgive her.

Brookner captures claustrophobic boredom in a damp cardigan rather well though.

And doesn’t it feel like it? I hated Hotel du Lac!

Hotel du Lac is an almost entire novel set in drizzle wearing a cardigan.

I think there should be a whole section of British Literature with sensible love affairs in drizzly climates. There could be many descriptions of hair running to frizz and the need to throw on a cashmere cardi.

In fact I think it rains all the time in the British part of The Muse - all very repressed-whereas in the other bit it's a very long, hot summer

Oh god, if I wrote a book I’d annoy everyone by overuse of the word “drizzle”, clearly

Romeo and Juliet are in Verona - so not as accustomed to a drizzle. They wouldn’t have all acted so rashly in a drizzle.

I love the Go Between. I think that more can happen in a hot summer, feelings run high so it does a lot of work for writers in terms of backdrop. It’s harder to have passionate liaisons and hotheaded fall outs when everyone’s a bit nippy and someone has to pop back for a cardigan.

However, I’m certain that I fell so hard for Jane Eyre the first time I read it aged 8 or 9 because I identified so strongly with the first sentence. A bit of drizzle goes a long way.

In The Nightingale, they constantly drink made-from-acorns-coffee as if the writer couldn't bear to leave hot liquid out but her research told her they had no real coffee and because they are French they, of course, smoke constantly. Always a Gauloises.

I loved the focus on coffee in Girl with the Dragon Tatoo.

@Piggywaspushed No one ever experiences a rather disappointing and drizzly summer One exception is The Magician's Nephew, CS Lewis; it was one of the coldest and wettest summers.

But speaking of seasons, as a child I used to be annoyed by "the long, hot summer had ended at last. Now it was winter." This happened in several books. What happened to autumn?!

Although I love the Harry Potter books, certain mundane things (not central to the plot) are conspicuously mentioned again and again.
Trainers; is this to remind us that they are teenagers in modern times?
Socks have loads of mentions, and not just for Dobby.
Harry's glasses. "Hermione's hand narrowly missed Harry's glasses at it shot up again."

"...as a gold prospector sifts for gold". This description appears several times when Dumbledore swirls the Pensieve.
Spitting. "'Do not say the Dark Lord's name!' spat Snape." Oliver Wood was spitting with rage.
Bathrooms are used a lot (admittedly it's important in Chamber of Secrets).

Matt Haig ahs made this observation on my Facebook feed today : wonder if he has been perusing Mumsnet!!

Why do romantic men always tuck a strand of hair behind someone's ear in modern books? That's pretty much all they do. I might write a book called The Hair Tucker. Weirdos.

No one ever experiences a rather disappointing and drizzly summer . It is always 'that long, hot summer when....'

I started wondering today whether writers of fiction set in the early twentieth century actually researched whether every summer actually was long and hot. They certainly aren't in Dickens (all that fog) or Eliot (floods!) : do you think this is because women began divesting themselves of unnecessary clothing ca 1900 and it all became pornromantic and full of stifled passions. I think I blame The Go Between or possibly Tess as a frontrunner. (admittedly it's awfully hot in Romeo and Juliet)

Small chins as an indicator of weasellyness caused me no end of anguish.

@treaclesoda I can't remember if it's mentioned specifically in the books, but Cersei blinks very slowly in the Game of Thrones TV show.

Sorry Satsuki, I misunderstood.

Yes, it is a rather overused description!

Haven't read the whole thread, but has anyone mentioned "infinitessimally" yet?

It's an awful word. Nobody uses it irl, it's clumsy to read, disrupts the pace of the text, and smacks of "Oh, look! I found a big word on thesaurus.com. I must be a good writer".

It was an American writer.