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?

I get annoyed by books set in places that the author not only hasn’t visited, but hasn’t even researched in any way
Not High literature, but a Hardy Boys books stood out in this way. Normally I can put them aside and remember they're mass produced and accuracy comes at the bottom end of their priorities.
This however was set in Oxford university, which inexplicably had become a campus university, with frequent referrals to "getting back to campus" as well as several other assumptions that 2 minutes googling would have highlighted as totally incorrect.

MistressDeeCee
( Yes - White Teeth by Zadie Smith .... Ive never understood why this book was rated so highly.

I thought this was one of the worst books I ever read. Absolutely hated it. And would joyfully list all the reasons why, but not one of them includes what is mentioned in your post!

itdoesnthavetobefun
My biggest hatred is front cover illustrations that show that no-one who read the book has approved the cover
I read a REALLY good book called the Basic Eight, by Daniel someone, which is the real name of Lemony Snickett (who wrote the excellent Unfortunate Events series). The Basic Eight is GREAT, but the front cover shows a girl lying on her back with her feet drawn up towards her bum with a writing pad against her knees which she's writing in. The picture starts from her toes, and you don't see her face. I think you can see her pants.

This is kind-of understandable, because the book is a memoir/diary. Except the character would NEVER have written in this way. From page 1, you know she'd sit upright at a proper desk. It would be really important to her.
The cover is just an opportunity to show a young girls thighs and her knickers. It's so disrespectful to the story!

Another one last night - Reading an early Peter Robinson/Inspector Banks and one of the characters goes up to 'Darly'. No-one, in the history of the world, has ever referred to Darlington as 'Darly'. It's Darlo. Fucking Darly....

I love very close by and agree, no one up here would know where darly was!

I read a lot of Jonathan Kellerman, and get really irritated by his sentence structure. He either comma-splices (separating independent clauses with commas rather than semi-colons or conjunctions) or he writes in those really annoying, staccato short sentences mentioned upthread.

And he uses thousands of single sentence paragraphs.

As if we can’t concentrate for more than three seconds at a time.

Because we are all stupid.

I’m not sure why I continue to read him

I like Jonathan Kellerman despite the staccato sentences. He didn’t do this in his earliest books - I think he just got lazy. I’ve noticed this tendency in other writers as well.
The Inspector Banks novels have lots of characters with anachronistic names, and Banks himself is a very irritating character. His taste in music hasn’t changed since the 60s/70s, and he’s oddly and boringly old fashioned and sexist.

My much loved Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison, chapter 1, has Harriet Vane ‘now twenty nine years old’.
Five years later, she’s 31. I want to know her secret.

(There’s also a character who refers to her own fiancé as Frank on one page and Archie on the next, but maybe she was just a bit forgetful.)

We had a copy of Strong Poison that had a picture of a SPOILER ALERT cracked egg and a syringe on the cover.

@longwayoff I totally agree about Ken Follett. I like his century trilogy but he has a weird obsession with breasts, describing one teenage character as "full-breasted" even though she's only a teen and then later talking about how her breasts bounce under her blouse. Not necessary!

My much loved Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison, chapter 1, has Harriet Vane ‘now twenty nine years old’.
Five years later, she’s 31. I want to know her secret.

That reminds me of reading Nancy Drew books as a child. Nancy had about 50 mysteries over consecutive summers but still stayed 19 years old.

I read a Ken Follett last week, and it was a rollicking good adventure story apart from the really gross sex scenes. The 19 year old was worried that her breasts would be too full to be attractive and another woman was worried her nipples were too big. The man is obsessed!

And don't get me started on the description of the erect penis....'blue tulip' yeeaaach!

I just skim over sex scenes now - been there, done that, don't need it in my face thanks

If I went to bed with a guy I was dating and found out he had "a blue tulip" I'd be getting the fuck out of there, stat!

Imagine being Mrs Ken Follett (if there is one) and knowing just how obsessed he is with breasts. That would be an uncomfortable existence

I would like to read a book with an ordinary looking female character. Without going back to check I can't recall a character not being described as slim, unless they are disgustingly fat (and described as such). No in between, no slight wobbles, no chunky calves. Either obese or skinny. And all overweight people in books are always eating excessively.

Mrs Ken Follett is Barbara, a former Labour MP. Those of us who were watching the 97 Election results may remember the champagne bottle hilarity.

@DuggeesWoggle the Elly Griffiths Euth Galloway series of books feature a heroine who is about a size 14/16. Her weight is mentioned occasionally but the focus is more on her knowledge of archaeology and how she uses it to solve crimes (and have it away with the DCI at the same time). I find her quite easy to relate to.

*Ruth Galloway

If I went to bed with a guy I was dating and found out he had "a blue tulip" I'd be getting the fuck out of there, stat!

Mrs Follett is a Labour politician and was an MP under Blair. I sometimes wonder if the old sex obsessed writers who were first published in the 60s and 70s have never received updated advice from publishers since then. I recall Shirley Conran interview saying she'd been told to include more graphic sex scenes and asking her neighbour, Anthony Burgess, to help out. With the writing, that is.

Wasn't Ken himself a Labour MP at one point?

I had no idea that was Ken Follett's wife. Poor Barbara.

Sounds like a refreshing change Lovetonap! I do love a good crime thriller but am becoming increasingly cheesed off with the casual misogyny that creeps in to even the best writers (Jo Nesbo even you do it!) Will give that author a look.

A small sample of what you get when I searched for "breasts" in a Ken book I've got on my kindle - 29 results, the dirty old codger!

I read a book recently which I came very close to not finishing because everything other sentence was talking about the main character's stomach "flipping". The first time I read it I thought it was a great description of that feeling but by the 10th page I was getting motion sickness. The story wasn't that great either and I guessed the ending by half way through.

Duggees you're right about the casual misogyny. My pet hate is the device of using a 'strong' female lead - scandi noir and imitators please note - to apparently lessen the impact of graphic descriptions of rape and mutilation, to yet another woman victim. I have felt that some authors take pleasure in putting those fantasies on the page but maybe thats just me.