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

The people with a dark past who escape to a remote community always have a child, or children, who they rarely see, and/or who have a disability. We're always supposed to feel sorry for them that they fucked off to the the remote community leaving their ex in the lurch hundreds of miles away.

Slicking is definitely an art in itself , I think only heroines in books know the secret.

I just tried to apply a slick of lipstick. Roughly 20% of my lips have lipstick on. The rest of my lips are lipstick less. I don't think I am slicking right

DoAsYouWouldBe LOL I'm partial to a chicken'n'ham lattice myself

This thread is hilarious.

I can't stand it when the female character is on her way out for the night and she just puts a touch of concealer and a bit of colour on her lips before going out.

Fuck off !!!! If she's anything like me she'll be using a trowel to apply concrete foundation to her face before using every other scrap of make up I can find just to look presentable

@Halsall That's one of my fave meal deal combos right there

I gave up on one author because of his overuse of 'crimson' . The crimson fluid flowed, the gush of crimson, a tide of crimson. It was blood ffs just say it!! Also 50 shades and all that murmuring Couldn't get past the first few chapters on that one - not that I missed out there.

Damn!
You’re right @Stealth!

Now I’ll have to pad off all over again......

You have to blow on the steaming hot tea too and watch the tendrils of steam

Thank goodness someone mentioned Cooper and Trollope.

After I’d padded downstairs barefoot this morning I remembered to lean against the comforting warmth of the Aga as I sipped my cup of scalding hot tea.

Oh, to go along with scraping hair into ponytails, people often skewer their hair with pins.

While we're discussing cliches why do characters who want to escape their dark past, always retire to tiny islands or remote rural or Coastal villages with about a population of 50? If you want to go unnoticed surely they're the last places you'd move to?

And why, when the villain has tracked them down, do they always head for the cliffs when you can guarantee that at least one of them is going over them?

Has no editor ever explained to Jilly Cooper that 'evidently' doesn't mean exactly what she thinks it means and 'apparently' would be better 99 times out of the many hundreds of times she used it in every single book?

Perhaps I notice it because I detest feet, but so many writers are obsessed with talking about them. It's like a filler. When there's a lull in the story they start talking about what their character's toes are doing or that they're barefoot. I don't care! Enough already.

Characters in books are often described as “lithe”.
I don’t recall ever hearing anyone use that word in real life.

There's a certain type of English upper middle class novel set in the 70s and 80s where is always a cold roast chicken and salad in the fridge, and a chilled Chablis. When do they cook all those chickens? And what would they have done with them if those guests hadn't turned up unexpectedly? Also male guests in those books always go straight to the bar/drinks cabinet and pour themselves a Scotch.

Alone, after agonising over her dilemma, the heroine shrugs her shoulders and makes a cup of tea/pours glass of wine.
I never, ever shrug when I’m alone. I don’t even give a mental shrug, or shake myself to dispel black thoughts.

DoAsYouWouldBeMumBy they're sippers to begin with because the java is always scorching hot. Presumably they gulp later like the rest if us but the author chooses not to mention that.:o

My soul needed a good deal of blessing after that. But once I commit to a project ... One virtue of Ayn Rand is she never specifies what people are eating, though she does pay quite a lot of attention to clothes and eye colour. Her heroes always show their purity of mind through chiselled faces and lean bodies and upright carriage. Her villains are soft, portly and slump.

Also, on holiday last year, we stayed in a house with a Barbara Taylor Bradford trilogy supposedly about really rich people. Over the course of forty years they ate the same meal and drank the same two wines.

I remember reading the word 'detritus' in a mystery shopper report for one of my stores once.

I was baffled. Really couldn't understand why they used it like it was a piece of everyday language

Yes, or the pizza or curry delivery menu!

I just listened to 63 hours of Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged' on Audible

Bless your soul.

Danielle Steele's people always eat steak and salad. Always.

Ontop it would be more realistic if the hero appeared with bags bulging with M & S's finest 'Dine in for 2 for £10'.

'Just a little intimate supper for two, darling,' he murmured suggestively, as Sophie blushed inwardly at the thought of what might follow after their hand-crafted chicken'n' ham lattice with rosemary potatoes, individual millionaire's shortbread desserts and a bottle of indifferent but just-about-acceptable red'

Ohhh, the sweet smell of decomposition. I’ve read a lot of crime fiction and had concluded that corpses must smell like Southern Comfort - sweet but gross. Then a mouse died under my bed, and it did NOT smell sweet, it smelled like shit. I mentioned this to a doctor acquaintance (must up my smalltalk game) and apparently it’s to do with aerobic vs anaerobic bacteria.

Stupid bloody literature.