Book icks

Charlotte Bronte, four foot nine inches, definitely makes all her favourite female characters tiny! If you're tall, striking and curvaceous in her fiction, you're often a wrong'un.

A wrong 'un, or a little on the Belgian side 😂(which comes to the same thing)

I don't think GE ever gave her own looks to her protagonists -- she was famously considered terribly ugly by her contemporaries (Henry James called her a 'horse-faced bluestocking') to the point where she used to joke about it herself, but was very self-conscious about being drawn or photographed! She's definitely very concerned with women's looks in her fiction, though.

Charlotte Bronte, four foot nine inches, definitely makes all her favourite female characters tiny! If you're tall, striking and curvaceous in her fiction, you're often a wrong'un.

Oh another. The ‘probable cause’ author who kept using the term ‘feedback’ incorrectly.’ It just meant all the conversation really jarred, stilted and unnatural’. For example, The DCI was waiting for feedback from the DI’. When it should have been ‘ The DCI was waiting for the DI to update/brief her’ ‘What’s your feedback’ said the DCI to the DI when again it would be ‘What have you got/any update’. The language just didn’t feel natural. The character would also say ‘Thank-you for that feedback’ when in real life you’d just say ‘Thanks for that’. It was all very stilted and unnatural. I wanted to get get my red pen out and offer some actual ‘feedback.’ 😂😂😂😂

Detective novel where tge detective is an actual Police officer based in England but the author clearly hasn’t done any research into UK law and has clearly based their knowledge from watching CSI or something. The amount of times tge lead detective will tell one of his staff to go and get an arrest warrant for murder drives me to distraction. In the UK you don’t need to get an arrest warrant you just need reasonable suspicion and you go and arrest them. Recently read one where they couldn’t get a search warrant as they didn’t have ‘probable cause’. No such thing in the UK and the book was based in Cornwall. Also they’d arrested tge suspect so could have just searched under section 18 of PACE. Surely tge British authorities could have found an actual Police Officer ask.

Also totally unconnected but when someone is described as smiling ‘wolfishly’. I know what they’re trying to convey but no one would say that in real life. It’s a very literary phrase and it always makes me think of the wolf in Little Red Riding who doing pantomime like grimacing!

Oh God that cover photo! In fact Oh God the whole dreadful book.

Yeah, George Eliot. She’s always flippin’ describing herself! And the fair short one is always disparaged in comparison.

in fiction, all the words are hers, and she doesn’t like sealing off the dialogue from the rest of the narrative artificially.

I disagree with that. Once she's written them down - or typed them on a screen -they're not her words, they're her characters' words and narrator's words. They are separate from her and she should be thinking of how best to present their words, not her words.

I always assumed Joyce didn't use them in some way to align himself with French rather than English authors, although I'm not sure why I think that actually.

It does strike me as a little pretentious of SR but I suppose she can do as she pleases in her own books (which tbf strike me as more than a little pretentious, but that's just personal taste). If all the characters are basically her, then why even contrive any characters, after all. She has made at least some effort to differentiate one skinny troubled lefty intellectual from another, so why not use conventional punctuation to differentiate what they have to say about Art and Life and Marx?

I guess that's the thing with icks - they're pretty individual 😂

A Little Life was one long ick. Including the cover photo.

But that’s not what SR said. She said she obviously uses them in non-fiction to indicate to the reader that she’s quoting someone else’s words, but in fiction, all the words are hers, and she doesn’t like sealing off the dialogue from the rest of the narrative artificially. It was in response to a question about whether her lack of speech marks was a reference to Cormac McCarthy. She pointed out it’s not all that wildly unusual — Joyce didn’t use them either, or Dorothy Richardson. Faulkner didn’t a lot of time. Loads of contemporary authors don’t. Miriam Toews, Junot Diaz, Celeste Ng. I think Lauren Griffith has stopped using them.

I take it you didn’t enjoy A Little Life? 🤣🫣

The scrubbed pine table, as overdone by Rosamunde Pilcher.

When an author pretends that a conventionally beautiful heroine isn't seen as such because her looks are unfashionable in some nonsensical way that has never been the case in any known period of Western history. E.g. heroine is tall and willowy but the way to look is short and podgy so everyone shuns her.

This thread so might have been mentioned already but I hate it when it skips randomly through periods back and forth back and forth. I end up having no idea what's going on.

Or when the main characters are murdered in the beginning and then you go back to try and find out who did it or what happened. I have lost my investment with those characters already I don't want to meet them.

And even if, by some unimaginable circumstance, she has neither had English lessons nor read any other books, she could look up the rule and learn how to use speech marks! I am sure Google could teach her.

I know that I don’t know/remember everything about grammar and punctuation, but I look up the things I don’t know, and learn them.

A lorry?!!! Good heavens.

Re the "stickers"... my DDs are teens and im still salty about the "sticker" on one of their toddler books declaring it "perfect for boys who like..."... as if girls couldnt like diggers.

That can be really tricky as it is often accent dependant so it may work perfectly in the writers voice but not work for some readers.

Oh god yeah, I couldn't bear to read them. I used to correct them sometimes because often there was a totally obvious way to make it scan, dammit!

Best thread ever. During Covid I reread comfort books- Georgette Heyer and then because Covid went on for so long tried some American authors of Regency Romcom. The mayhaps on every other page and sidewalks and yards baffled me because the authors all said they were inspired by Jane Austen and Heyer. I even came across a lorry. I sank back into early Jane Austen which is delicious

One in young children's books: when the rhythm doesn't scan properly.

Yes true. It's kind of a story within story but of course totally incompatible with the real world. Her characters are never the main characters of their lives, often just vessels for the third-hand stories. I do love her work but I have yo be in the mood for it.

My ick (another one) is fake stickers on book covers. They used to be peelable, like "Oprah bookclub must-read" or "shortlisted for Caffé Nero prize". Now they are part of the cover and really diminish the beauty of a nice cover.

For example, Sally Rooney not using speech marks because she doesn’t “understand their function”. Give me a break.

If she said that, it makes her sound dim. Presumably she had English lessons at school and has read other novels and seen how other authors use speech marks.

What's next, not using punctuation at all because you don't understand it?

Another pet hate of mine is preternaturally knowing ‘quirky’ children. See for example the boy in Richard Powers’ s Bewilderment. Powers clearly intends us to find him engaging but he’s actually incredibly annoying. Ali Smith has a tendency to do this too though I like her books.

@Pigtailsandall Yes I agree and I have enjoyed some of RC’s work. But when some guy is holding forth in an Italian restaurant for page after page you do wish everyone would get up and leave him droning on.