tiny niggles in books - do you have one?

[Lovestonap]

I was thinking today how much I hate it when events and speech in books don't match up. An example (I have made up rather than transcribed):

They ordered their coffee and sat down with it. Petunia took a sip

• 3 lines of dialogue follow -

Ben finished his coffee and stood up

"I'll say good bye then".

In real life drinking coffee with someone. particularly a friend or relation means lots and lots of conversations - even if there is the occasional pause. Usually takes at least 15 minutes. Are we meant to think they sat in silence apart from the 30 seconds of dialogue?!?

Clunky plot device which irritates me. I should probably stop overthinking these things......

Anyone else got anything that winds them up like this?

@iklboo That was my suspicion too. 😂

@Lovestonap OMG, that is amazing, it really could have been! I think it was October 2010 so the timing would be about right. I definitely need to read it just in case.

I came across this quite good parody of Dan Brown’s (truly terrible) style:
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-fun-of-renowned-dan-brown/amp/

But a quick search and i think the second comment down on this thread is best - it begins “Author Dan Brown strode through the brass lobby of a bar and ordered a beer, his eyes white as something white. The bartender had eyes too.”
able2know.org/topic/136926-1

ImmatureCheddar, shudder of revulsion at the knothole thing, distaste that anyone had such a pervy imagination. Watching a documentary about the 'parachute murderer' on the same evening, presented by the fragrant Fiona (?Antiques Roadshow woman) she treated us to a visit to the murderer's favourite 'swingers club' in a nondescript suburban house. Behold: the wall to the right of the entrance hall had several holes drilled into it for the purpose you described. Or, as Fiona said, "they put their willies in there'?" I've got a feeling she's going to regret that clip for years to come.

Foreign characters given stereotypical names that are outdated. I notice that for German characters but I bet it's true for other languages/countries as well. I read a book (can't even remember which one) where a German girl who would have been born around 2000 was called "Helga". The only two Helgas I know are in their seventies. It's just not a name people have given their children for several decades now.

Igneococcus that tends to happen in reverse with British characters - someone in their late teens / 20's called that latest popular name when it would have been wildly out of fashion when they were born. It's OK when it's one character as someone would have had the name but when a whole cast are given out of generation names it grates.

Thanks ravens, vastly entertaining

Like the British character in her forties called Peyton in CSI: NY.

I'm sure it happens for every country grumble it's the German ones where I notice it. It should be something fairly easily avoided now, you can google lists of popular names for recent years for many countries now.

I am so glad I found this thread, I am nodding (happily) (or would be if I were JK with her incessant verb + adverb syntax) along to almost everything. Speaking of which- god yes, she needed an editor to say "stop it now, this book does not need to be 1400 pages long- the Chamber of Secrets was perfect love"

I am currently late to the party, but reading The Quebert Affair. Does the guy get paid extra for every time he uses a fucking exclamation mark? (!!!) The dialogue writing is appalling. I wonder, in fairness to him, has it been poorly translated because nobody knew what a blockbuster it was going to be, or is he just a lazy writer? I can't now not see all the bloody exclamation marks. Obviously, the slightly creepy undercurrent of sexual abuse and Lolita-esque yearnings goes without saying...

Freya North- how come ALL her female characters are described like Sunday school teacher virgins (swishy hair, which always smells of lemons, not a scrap of makeup, works with the disabled, sick or dying) yet the second they hit the sack it's like the male (always called something monosyllabically "Jack"-like, she turns into a porn star. I hadn't spotted the weirdness about the places she sets her stories in, but I gave up reading them after the sister trilogy bollocks.

The anachronistic names- absolutely- One Day- nobody graduating on the day they did (I graduated that day- irrelevant aside) would have been called Dexter. Unless they were being written into a book with the author's eye on the Hollywood $$$$ sign.

Accents- Nobody, ever, in the history of the English language has said "oop" when they mean "up". They have said "buke" when they mean "book", they have said "cuke" when they mean "cook". (Nth Derbyshire dialect variation, used by my grandparents among others) but oop? Nope. Only used by southern writers to thinly veil their disdain for the northerner (who probably doesn't have a whippet and a flat cap either)

I am plodding through Wolf Hall at the moment. I love historical novels, I know HM is a great, A Place of Greater Safety is one of my all time top 10 books. But the cohesive devices are gone. I don't know if it's because she's become all literary and prize-winning- but I find myself having to go back pages to find out who is speaking at the moment, or who they're speaking to.

Elizabeth George- she's toned down the posho part of Inspector Lynley thank Christ- since the TV adaptations- but the earlier books made him and Helen (RIP) sound like Lady Mary of Downton. I know in the books he's an aristo, and she's a lady, but I doubt even minor aristos spoke like she had them speak. He reads like something out of the 50s while she seems some 1920s throwback.

I didn't realise there were Midsomer books- might look them out. But does every murder happen at whatever club Joyce has recently joined? Or, failing that, at whatever job the can't-stick-at-anything Cully is doing that week? (and who the fuck calls anyone Cully?)

Kay Scarpetta is unbelievably insane. Literally. I read them avidly up to when Benton (doesn't actually) dies. But then they get so increasingly, what's the word, unrealistic, that at times, it's like reading a parody. There have been times when I've wondered if PC isn't actually either quite poorly, or completely taking the piss. And, I'll just leave Lucy "the most annoying lesbian in all of fiction" there. Could the fucking helicopter not have crashed when she first bought it at the age of about 7?

"like the male" should be with the male

Good job I'm just a reader, not a writer!

Haven't RTFT, but:

1.The heavily-built character who moves with surprising grace/agility.

1. Characters who drink "scalding" coffee/tea. Think about it. Fucking stupid.
2. An adjective for every noun.
3. Shit/weird similes.

(Haven't read the full thread yet, so apologies if this has been said)

Completely changing the personality of a character from one book to the next!

Other Jackie Collins fans will know what I'm on about when I mention the name "Paige Wheeler".

Just...no!

Just finished Lethal White and had to come back to this thread to express two more irritants, as showcased by JKR:

1. Grumpy ex-boxers inexplicably having beautiful sexy women falling all over them even though they cannot commit, only show up for sex and treat said beautiful women like dirt
2. Mystery novels where the detective says something like "here are the clues, put them together!" and the sidekick doesn't know what he's on about, and just as he's about to explain the phone rings and they get handily distracted for the next chapter. Grr.

I have just read a book where the characters spent 2 weeks in a rented house in Belgium or maybe it was the Netherlands!
The author couldn't make up his mind and kept changing between the 2 every time their location was mentioned.

Cliffhanger chapter endings. Dan Brown is a classic example - "he turned around and his worst enemy stood there, gun in hand." And the next chapter starts with a scene about a totally different character!

I am plodding through Wolf Hall at the moment. I love historical novels, I know HM is a great, A Place of Greater Safety is one of my all time top 10 books. But the cohesive devices are gone. I don't know if it's because she's become all literary and prize-winning- but I find myself having to go back pages to find out who is speaking at the moment, or who they're speaking to.

It doesn't help that roughly half of the male characters were called Thomas (not HM's fault), still love Wolf Hall though but I also prefer A Place of Greater Safety, it's in my all times Top 10 too.

dp absolutely hates books written in present tense, that's not a tiny niggle tbf.

BookMeOnTheSudExpress I lost it with Patricia Cornwell's Scarpetta books long ago.

Then to cap it all off I discovered that in her obsessive quest to prove that the artist Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper , she spent literally millions buying a collection of his paintings and actually destroyed one of them in a bonkers attempt to find some kind of evidence to bear out her theory. That was it for me. How could anyone do that to a work of art?

People in books (and tv shows) who work together are either frostily polite or best friends. Either way, they spend a lot of time feeling like something was wrong with their colleague so popping round to see if they’re ok at night with a bottle of wine. Better if it’s the frostily polite type too as that’s when they’ll loosen up and spill all their secrets.

Or they have delightfully gossipy lunches, know everything about each other’s families (“oh, that sister of yours, what is she like?”) etc.

I never see a normal workplace, where you’re all perfectly friendly, have a laugh, the odd night in the pub every six months or so and the odd funny text message outside work, but are not intimately involved with each other’s lives, struggle to remember spouses’ names or birthdays, and don’t really think about them all that much once you’ve gone home apart from the odd funny story.

Can't remember the title, but I read one recently where the main character and her best friend used to regularly walk to the station together as one went to work and the other walked her dog. No issue with that, but good luck with trying to get on the bloody tube at Wandsworth Common! Stuff like that is so easy to check.

four mistakes in three words of German. What were the three words?

Completely with you there Hilda. Cornwell barking with the Sickert book. Very irritating.

@Philomena

"du dumm narr"

For me, it is spelling and grammatical errors. It really grates me when I read incorrect use of they’re, their, there. Use of “of” instead of “have”. Think “should of” or “could of” instead of “should have” or “could have”. The other is the word “with”. Surely “with” is meant to be used with pronouns such as “with me”, “with you”, “with us” etc. Now many authors simply skip use of pronouns. “Come with.” Where’s the rest of the sentence? Small pet peeve, but annoying to me nonetheless.

LaDaronne that's quite an impressive achievement!

I hate it when Marian Keyes makes her non-Irish characters speak in Irish vernacular. Sorry MK: I love you otherwise.