Reading peeves

@drspouse no it was just a passing comment along the lines of 'everything cleaned down for tomorrow work, benches washed and floor autoclaved' ...didn't finish the book as it put me off!

@Greenteandchives agree re THIF. Trying to avoid spoilers but u could have forgiven that particular coincidence occurring once (Dublin is a small place...) but not multiple times!

Another note on lack of speech marks... do authors do this to make their books seem cleverer than they really are? I'm thinking of Sally Rooney in particular. I have read much better books on similar themes that get dismissed as chic lit fluff but SR removes speech marks and suddenly they are modern classics??

Anything that is excellent but then has something the author thinks is edgy thrown in. Or books that have lazy endings-especially those where it is left for the reader to decide.

The Binding made me want to throw it.

Geography is bad in films too. When someone turns a corner and jumps to a different Greek island...

Popcorn heavy reliance on coincidence to make a story work is exactly what ruined that MN favourite ‘The Heart’s Invisible Furies’ for me.

Books that use local or historical dialect for things all the way through- puts me off even the title of crawdads.

I can't stand sloppy geography. I read a book that was set locally. One character had a part time job in a bar and would drive to work to cover an hour of someone's shift - a two hour round trip for a minimum wage job!

I also get so irritated by rich villains - people able to commandeer planes, yachts etc to enable them to carry out their dirty work. They use money as a kind of magic - he was able to kidnap her and keep her hidden in a cottage/underground bunker/cabin in the woods because he controls a vast empire and has thugs and minions at his disposal.

I think it was in Victoria Hislop's novel about the Spanish civil war, the main characters age didn't quite tie up in the present time

I just read Miss Benson’s Golden Beetle. There was too much ‘she took a bite’ ‘as she swallowed’ ‘chewing, she nodded.’

Agree about jarring names. In the early 2000s lots of chick-lit type books had protagonists names things like Poppy, Lily or Ella; names that were fashionable for babies at the time. Actual, 20-something women would have been called Sarah, Clare or Jenny.

Absolutely.

Agree with so many on here. I can’t stand those Christmas themed books you see in Sainsbury’s- I’ve attached a photo- or that endless rubbish about poverty stricken girls/women having to looks after a baby etc. There’s 100s of them. I used to enjoy the candlestick maker’s daughter kind of novel until they blurred into one another.
I met the author of a series of books about vintage tea cups, she seemed a bit bashful when admitting what she wrote-even she knew it was pap!

I haven't read any recent children's books lately, but do any modern characters use the lavatory? Enid Blyton children never did.

Pet peeve about childrens books... Is when neglect is just accepted and ignored. Harry Potter for example... Why did none of his Primary Teachers express concern?

@kshaw did they chop up the floor to put it in the autoclave?

I get fed up with repeated descriptions of how wonderful the protagonist's children are (Jodie Piccoult is particularly bad for this ) I don't want to read about 'delicious baby smell' or teenagers who 'smell of apples' and endless drivel about how quirky and intelligent the little darlings are. Yes, the protagonist has children, it can be assumed she loves her own children, so can we please stop reiterating this and move on with the plot.

I love this thread! Intensely dislike the 'oh my sister is so straightlaced and boring and does everything my parents expect of her, and I'm so wild and free and unconventional' that pops up frequently in historical fiction. Such a lazy way of character building and showing the norms of whatever time they're inhabiting. Always wanted to write a book exploring the inner life of the conventional sister as authors don't seem to consider her worthy of having one.

As a scientist when the science is wrong!! Annoys me. Like a 'dna test' is ran in 5 mins...takes about an hour to set up and roughly 3 hours to run. Once read that they'd autoclaved the lab floor. An autoclave is a high pressure and steam system that completely sterilises lab equipment. They'd clearly just googled 'how to clean things in a lab' not actually researched what the process was. Sloppy

I have to ask where you're finding all these rotten books... as I have never read anything like that described by @DancelikeEmmaGoldman last night. But maybe I want to!

Perhaps not really, but it was a v entertaining read.

I do recognise the "tea shop by the sea" trope though, I've seen plenty of those around.

I think I'll stick to re-reading Swallows and Amazons, The Moomins, etc for a bit longer. Most of my reading these days is stuff my children are reading- how I wish Philip Reeve, Cressida Cowell, Lemony Snicket et al. had been born 30 years earlier!

@DancelikeEmmaGoldman Yes! What with the shoe obsession in those books?

Any novel involving the heroine going off to an island (usually a Greek island) to 'find herself'. Cue lots of dreary descriptions of sunsets and sand beneath the feet, simple food covered in olive oil, quirky locals and invariably some rugged fisherman type who at first appears to have a local girlfriend but is actually unattached and the owner of a lucrative business, who falls head over heels with the 40-something heroine in preference to all the lithe local 20 year olds throwing themselves at his feet morning, noon and night, because of course that happens.

I read one recently where the main character was torn because if she didn’t do Strictly on the advise of her agent she would lose the family farmhouse (not the main family home, just the farmhouse). She was a populist historian who had been on the telly, you see. I don’t mind a bit of ‘how the other half lives’ but that seemed.....,excessive.

Oh yes @Pelleas and people who fit in picking the kids up, cooking a delicious tea, going to choir, watching a film with their partner and a spot of detecting between 5.30 and bedtime, when the rest of us have no time travel abilities.

I read a Charles de Lint novel. Well, I started it. Two people are amazingly transported to an unknown land. After a bit of chat, he lies down for a nap and she wanders off and encounters an inhabitant. More chat and she goes back to original bloke. Some wandering about and they’re doing yet more chatting and she suddenly says, “Oh, I forgot to tell you! While you were napping I met this bloke. Seeing as he’s the only other person we’ve seen in this mysterious world, of course it completely slipped my mind.” Or words to that effect.

I was so enraged I put the book down and never picked it up again. That was years ago and I still remember how angry I was at such a stupid plot device.

Characters who seem to have lots of money from interesting but not fabulously paid jobs

I'll add to this - characters who supposedly work full time but seem to have endless freedom to wander round furthering the plot. In real life you can't just shoot off at the drop of a hat back to your home town where a body's just been dug up that's triggered memories of seeing a murder that you'd blotted out for 20 years because it was too traumatic but now you're going to become a full-time amateur detective and investigate it.

The reality would be your boss saying 'I can let you have next Wednesday off but otherwise there's nothing free until October'.

@Finkelbraun that sub is both horrifying and hilarious!

Don't get me started on Murakami and his obsession with women who are not beautiful but the main character finds them incredibly attractive because he's so much more interesting and deep than normal people who are repelled by ugly women

Agree about jarring names. In the early 2000s lots of chick-lit type books had protagonists names things like Poppy, Lily or Ella; names that were fashionable for babies at the time. Actual, 20-something women would have been called Sarah, Clare or Jenny.

Characters who seem to have lots of money from interesting but not fabulously paid jobs, like librarians who can afford large flats by Hampstead Heath. Also most architects are not earning enough for sports cars and swanky penthouses (I know, I‘m married to one), and don’t get me started on artists who sell enough work to fund a glamorous lifestyle without doing any teaching or side jobs