Book icks

While I like detail and rich language in a book, I don't need irrelevant minutiae. Back when Kate Mosse's Labyrinth came out I remember struggling through a scene where someone makes breakfast, including bread into toaster, butter on to toast, choosing the jam, spreading the jam... That sort of thing is so tedious.

Descriptions of character’s clothing. It’s often completely irrelevant (or there’s a subtext that I’m missing). It’s really common in US books. For example, ‘she was wearing a blue shirtwaister and Mary Janes’. I saw this sort of thing so often I had to google what both were.

Stephen King is awful for this. Constant use of brand names, and because I'm not American I have to look up what he's talking about almost every time. You can just say ibuprofen, you don't need to say Advil, FFS.

I read a book recently where the author kept stating "of course he did" over and over again. Like "Jason had a top of the range BMW, of course he did". "Jason lived in a multi million pound house of course he did" It would have been ok to use once but it went on throughout the book.

An alcoholic / divorced detective returning to their home town and solving a cold case from when they were young 🥱

This one, and I will add when people 'mouth' or 'breathe' rather than just whisper or talk or whatever!

Stopping reading commercial fiction would solve most of these.

I just finished an audiobook where every 3 minutes the protagonist had an imaginary conversation with her dead mother. I actually wanted to toss my phone out the window at one point, such was the annoyance.

I always ALWAYS skip any poetry or songs in books

I hate it when book 1 is a single pov - and for a random reason book 2 or 3 etc is suddenly another pov.

I hate growling men, simpering girls, padding (as above), watery bowls, biting lips, world sworn enemies to lovers, 8ft tall men paired with 3ft women, who are tiny and breakable

Or the Stephen King reverse version of this where all his modern day teenagers are called things like Patty and Bob and Ken and Mary 🙄

I hate reading “she padded through to the kitchen” padded - once you focus on it…grr Another is male writers always using breast size as part of the description of female characters. I enjoyed Sarum but even the Neolithic women’s breast size was remarked on!

Sloppy editing/proof reading

Thoughtless stereotyping

Brand dropping

When you've read the whole book guessing who the villain is for it to turn out to be the postman. He delivered one letter in Chapter two but has never been mentioned since and for whom there is no reasonable rationale for his villainly.

I can't remember the author but she said "... in his orbit" every other chapter. 🙄

You may recognise who it is. I had to stop reading her books.

Men writing badly from a woman's point of view. Makes me furious.

The glowing book reviews shown on the cover attributed to other authors of the same genre....I have noticed that they all have either the same publishing house. So they just fawn over each other's books.

See also - someone being the victim of mysterious, obscure, puzzling events that seem inexplicable - then it turns out they are completely bonkers and none of the events actually happened.

An unreliable narrator, done well, can be brilliant but as a lazy way of explaining an impossible plot, it's a 'throw the book across the room in annoyance' device.

Person falsley accused of a crime. Goes on the run. Commits actual crimes clearly their name.
Faces no consequences for those crimes when original criminal caught.

I call this the Scooby Doo effect for books and films. If you need to explain everything in the last chapter or few minutes you've done a very poor job.

On the subject of covers why do loads of recent novels have 'A novel' somewhere on the cover? I've manged to identify 1000s of novels in my life without it being spelled out on the cover.

In shit-erature I have a peeve for "overstuffed armchairs". What even is this? Why didn't they stop stuffing the armchair when it was stuffed enough?

In literary fiction I loathe and detest the American post-grad creative writing nonsesne of "so much x" - e.g. "The snow fell like so much white frosting", "the sun shone like so much golden honey", "the plums hung like so much hairy bollocks".

I'm out as soon as a character is introduced as a they/them. It is too confusing and distracting as I am always trying to work out who the other people in the scene is and then I realise that there is only one person. I think it was mandatory a few years ago to appease the young, ultra-woke publishing staff who would otherwise reject the manuscript.

Random, implausible lesbianism to punctuate a character’s life changes. Looking at you Elif Shafak, but you’re not the only one.

For me, it's the super-twisty villainous scheme in which the hero deduces his way through layer after layer of subtle clues, only to fall into the villain's final trap...

...where he would never have ended up if he hadn't worked out the first bits. I mean, what kind of wasteful villain rests their whole, expensive, evil plot twist on the off-chance that the hero will brilliantly deduce where to go from two old postcards, half a crossword and a chance encounter with a retired professor?