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?

Swinging Yes I noticed the age gap changed heaps in how hard can it be - they were 6 and 1 in the first book book and now only a couple of years between them?

I love the Shardlake books but I get really wound up by the author's overuse of the word 'sardonic'.

And books where male characters are described as 'tall' whilst female characters are described as 'petite, with a flat stomach, and a waist so narrow that he could almost stretch his hand right across it. Ben marvelled at how Sally had borne him six children and yet her body gave no hint of it. As she stepped out of the shower he felt the familiar stirring as he gazed at her pert breasts which were neither too big, nor too small, and as firm as they were twenty years earlier when he has first touched her. His eyes diverted to the tops of her thighs, slim and yet welcoming, and as his mind wandered to the delights to be found in her secret place'. Etc etc. Yes, Ken Follett, I'm talking to you...

I read a book a while back about a military wife in Cyprus.
It niggled me that the author said something about the sound of the cicadas in March (or similar cool month) when the cicadas are out in July and August. Plus the distance between two army bases being much further than it really is.

There were other inconsistencies and because I live there it spoiled the book a bit for me.

Ken Follett always a bit too sex obsessed, I find it irritating and unnecessary. Reminds me of those directors who always insist an actress being stark naked in any old film is 'essential' to the plot when its just been thrown in for titillation. We can be titillated more effectively elsewhere, get on with the story.

Since the social media meme of 'describe yourself as a male writer would' I've found it almost impossible to read male authors without being outraged by that. Ken Follett is awful for it (I realised in his most recent Pillars of the Earth one that I knew little more than height or hair colour about the men whereas I could give you cup size and inner thigh measurements on the women) but even proper serious writers that win prizes do it. Basically we know how fuckable every female character is. Annoyingly many women writers do it too, through the eyes of their male characters.

I do feel sorry for editors as tiny mistakes get missed but then irritate readers. I often spot ones where days of the week have gone wrong, so a character talks about a Friday and then takes the kids to school the next day etc. And Danielle Steel (teenage years wasted) used to have her characters get through about ten lines of dialogue over a three course meal.

I hate it when they split dialogue, so:

‘Do you want’ john asked seductively, ‘me to tickle you with my feather?’

It really jars; I can hear the pause especially when it’s not in a natural place. I accept its done for interest but it’s infuriating. When badly done it really highlights an author’s inadequacy

I hate the ‘staccato’ way of speaking. Adele Parks is often guilty of this.

‘Mélanie stared at the drink in front of her. Sighed. Took a sip. Another. Felt that familiar burning as it slid down. Soothing her. She tipped her head back. Drank it back’

Just....use a fucking comma. It comes out so stilted!

I have a pet hate of using the same adjectives too close together. Loads of authors do it, it’s so lazy.

‘Her hair really was incredible’

Next sentence:

‘Her clothing was an incredible mish-mash of colours and textures’

I left a scathing review on Amazon where the male author had gone into a lengthy description of the lead female character's physical attributes. Right down to how many pounds she weighed... Along with the full breasts etc etc. Except given the weight he'd described she'd have had a BMI of about 15. Fucking clueless. I also wanted about the fact it was a shame he'd not mentioned the male lead's weight and tautness.

Martina cole needs to find another word for "many" rather than using legion. The repeats of this word were legion.

I hate any use of the words grin/grinned.
“Haven’t you heard?” he said with a grin.
I’d smack him one for that grin.

I don’t know of anyone has ever read any Mark Edwards (The Magpies) but the women in his stories can’t get enough of sex and want it all the bloody time!! It’s not realistic. They can never just not be up for it. He’ll describe how the lead female character has spent all day in bed with the ‘flu for example or done a 15 hour shift at work and then

‘Kirsty flopped back on the bed, her t-shirt riding up as she did so to reveal the expanse of delicious creamy flesh of her stomach. She wriggled towards him seductively and ran a hand down his thigh. Martin was exhausted from the day’s events and had planned on a shower and an early night. Seemed like Kirsty had other ideas! She helped him remove his clothes and they moved together by the lamplight, only falling asleep, spent, after several hours’

Yeah right!

Last book I read the person was in an abusive relationship and didn’t have a bank account

But she drove to Cornwall and the car broke doe the garage fixed it - who paid?

Money in general. Someone is broke, has no job and yet they seem to manage to keep buying essentials with no mention of the income. In real life the book would be all about the stress of no money.

I read Louise Pentland's book over the summer. The first one. It was a 99p kindle thing and I didn't realise the background to it (her YouTube stuff) or what a big deal the book had been till I finished and went to see whether other readers thought it as bad as I did. It's about a single mother with a very part time job who seemed to have no money worries at all. It's tosh.

Ben Elton in Gridlock mentions a argument between a man in a wheelchair and the TFL employee at the ticket office at South Kensington. The wheelchair user is annoyed that there is no provision for wheelchair users at that station, no lifts or ramps. But as I work in South Kensington I know that the ticket office is down a flight of stairs and there is no way a wheelchair could even get that far.
I couldn't finish the book after that.

yy to women's weights always being mentioned and being very low. If a woman has children her figure must never reveal it (her narrow waist gave no hint of the 4 children she had borne, she still had her girlish figure).

When I was a teenager I LOVED Jane Green's Jemima J. read it again and again and again.

Now I read it and thought wtf? 15 stone at 5 foot 7 is not the elephant she was made out to be (although, granted we as a society are a lot more accepting of plus sizes than we were mid 90s when it was written) -

also, she ends up with a BMI of under 19 -- and she loses 7 stone in about 4 months, but her body is slim and toned enough that people in California lust after her in the street - no loose skin/stretch marks at all then? Your large breasts just became athletically 'boyish'? Ok then.

When I first read the book I thought it was feminist and empowering. As an adult I found it sickeningly superficial and unrealistic.

Children's bedtime story books with really dark pages. Granted you memorise them after the eleventy billionth time - but Oliver Jeffers - Black text on a navy blue sky was impossible to read. Bedtime books are read in the dimmest light possible to get the little sods to sleep!

Coffee drinking annoys me too - in Before I go to Sleep there were a few gaffs. A polystyrene cup turned into china half way through or similar.

Read a book set in Manchester recently and it was talking about intersections on roads and one character was driving a Ford Contour, which is the north American version of the Mondeo. The contour was never sold in Europe. Why do we have to pander to American readers? American writers don't pander to us...

Jasper Fforde, and the use of his/her nth decade. So, a character is described as entering his fifth decade and then later he's actually fifty one! No, no, no - your first decade is going to be the one before you're ten, so your fifth decade will be your forties. And he keeps doing it and it irritates me to an unreasonable degree.

I get annoyed by books set in places that the author not only hasn’t visited, but hasn’t even researched in any way. I read one set in a country I know well where the desert had been put in the opposite part of the country to where it really is.

I also read a book (can’t remember the title, it was a few years ago) where one of the minor characters changed names part way through. I read through the relevant chapters again and yes, Sally’s husband John had somehow become Richard!

As for padding - it always makes me think of someone walking about in thick, fluffy socks.

I hate it when the characters names are wrong for their ages - Peter James's Roy Grace series are particularly awful for this, a lot of the incidental characters names are too 'old' for the characters supposed ages. Even when the series started in the early 2000's you'd have been hard pushed to find a Roy in his late 30s. I get that not everyone has a name that dates them, but most people do. It jars when a twenty year old in a contemporary book is called Sandra or Barry.

Yes I loved Jemima J when I was younger but it’s awful reading it now. I once read a book that said ‘could of...’i nearly threw it at the wall!

I was also reading a BenElton book where he used Glaswegian language and it was actually really accurate until the female character called a make ‘hen’. I was really enraged by it, only females are referred to as hen!

I'm worried that Ben has scalded his mouth on boiling coffee.

Overuse of italics. I can read thank you, it is not necessary for you to handhold me through the emphasis.
Phil Rickman was bad for this when he started out, but he has dialled it down a lot now. If he would just kill off drippy Lol too.......

I got so infuriated with books I was reading on my Kindle with
the mistakes and inconsistencies you all mention, that I started doing beta-reading and proofreading for independent authors in my spare time.

At least, it made me feel better to have stopped some dross being put out there, but I think some of them found my critique a bit too... close to the bone! As I wasn't being paid for it, I wasn't going to hold back with telling them how bad their characterisation was or how loose their plotline!

I was bedridden for a couple of weeks and read a number of my MIL’s cheesy bodice ripper type books. The endless historical inaccuracies and the constant describing of her own body by the female protagonists was quite funny however the 17th century highwayman who went by the name of T.J. and the descriptions of the dark, satanic mills of Somerset was just ludicrously stupid.