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?

Hate first person narrative, just can't get on with it.

Books that take unnecessary artistic licence around geography.

God yes!

I read a book last week where the hero was rushing on the bakerloo line to Waterloo to get the Eurostar to Paris.

The Eurostar goes from St Pancras (international) and it totally ruined the book for me. So annoying.

It used to go from Waterloo though. Was the book old? Or maybe just researched from old information?

Robert Galbraith aka J.K. Rowling and Strike's prosthetic limb. At no point during the 3 books I struggled through was I allowed to forget the 'hero' had lost his leg in Afghanistan. Not linked to the plot ever. Except when he needs to spend money on a taxi. Again.

It’s even worse in Book 4 - goes on and on and on about his leg pain and his limp. It’s liek, just use your crutches for a bit until you heal the injury!!!

@Isitmybathtimeyet oh really? I did not know that! Well that’s me told yes the book is quite old.

*old like pre iPhones not old historically old

A book by an American author, set in my home town in the back of beyond. Meticulous descriptions of streets down to the blooming road junctions, but a gruff English shop assistant talking about the sidewalks and describing things as 'Real fine'. Did she research the place with eyes open and ears tight shut?

Elizabeth George is an American who writes detective stories set in the U.K. They are very long and detailed and to me entirely unreadable because the tone is “off” throughout. However she seems to be very popular so it’s probably just me.
BTW on the whole I prefer American mystery writers. Sue Grafton is wonderful and wisely stuck to her home turf (RIP Sue).

I quite agree on Elizabeth George. SImilar is Minette Walters who has deprived black council estate yoof in one of her books talking about "the rozzers".

I'd be proper impressed with a historically old book that predicted the Eurostar though

Oh yes - forgot about Minette Walters. Worse if anything.

Oh yes. That reminds me of when authors describe my part of the world. Freya North wrote a terrible book where someone's dead granny told her to visit all four countries of the UK to find herself or something. The bit that was set in my area was cringe worthy in the extreme, from the accents, to the description of the landscape, to the mannerisms and turn of phrase of the characters. I can only conclude that she hadn't so much as stopped by for an afternoon before writing it, and instead wrote about what she wants to believe it is like.

Mind you, I've never finished one of her books because I find them so twee. I always end up reading them in a holiday cottage or something because I've forgotten to bring something with me.

One book I read was set on the Cumbrian coast and often made references to it being by the North Sea.

Well that's kind of true. Its only a couple of hundred miles away from the North Sea.

Yes, it’s not too far to go to walk the dog on the beach

I've just stopped reading a book set in a mill town in the years of WW1 as the heroine (a mill worker & suffragette) speaks in perfect BBC English whilst the majority of the other characters (from mill workers to the local aristocracy) speak in dialect.

I was also put off the July Cooper riders series (cant remember whether it was jump, riders or polo) as one of the heroines aged 2 years over the 4 years or so the novel coveted. This was back in the 80s and my friend who rereads these regularly told me that was corrected in later editions but it put me right off!

Elizabeth George researched one of her novels in my halls of residence and the book contains a very accurate description of my (horrible) curtains.

I'm listening to a (to be fair) pretty bad thriller at the moment. The most annoying thing is not the clunky dialogue, the implausible multiple plots, the blatant mistakes that contradict earlier books in the series (I remember them FFS, why can't the author?), the lazy characterisation of all the women...

It's the phones. No one checks their phone, or their cellphone. They check their fucking iPhone. Every. Single. Time.

Seriously considering tweeting the author and asking if he had a product placement deal with Apple.

Oh God, I was going to mention Elizabeth George! Her protagonist is an Earl but also a DI, and one of his sidekicks is Barbara Havers, who is proper working-class. It turns out that George can depict neither the aristocracy nor the working classes with any skill at all and thus relies on horribly lazy cliches.

Ooh one book I read an eon ago, made sure to mention the water marks in the cellar (where next victim was being held) when I got to the end of the book, the whole house was inland. And the water marks was never mentioned again.
Also Patricia Cornwall, sorry, I do love your books, but the main character ( Kay Scarpetta) has a habit of thinking things, like "oh I know dear husband, but remember you have a key speech that day so going off now on a manhunt will mean you won't make the speech, if you even survive the terrible awful murderer when he gets hold of you" I always think, gods sake don't give him a face to say these things, just bloody say it to his face right now"
The more books she writes, the more she does that.

Elizabeth George does my head in. I tried to read 'What Came Before He Shot Her' and abandoned it as it was so bloody awful

I really tried with Elisabeth George, but isn't she the one with some long involved document handily found about half way through the book just to bulk it out by 30 pages all in italic that I won't read.
Sigh, if it's that bloody important (I doubt it) then make it readable,.

@Flooffloof Nothing wrong with inland cellar watermarks. Ours has a tide mark, and we're not only 70 miles inland we're most of the way up a hill. It's water table, not sea.

I know spoon, but to make such a big deal of it then ignore that it's there.
It's as if the book was edited but no one realised that the water marks was important.
Wish I could remember the book, but it's lost in the mists of time.

Got to add DS's favourite gripe when I'm reading aloud to him - dialogue which goes:

"Hello I'm Fred," said Fred.

He wants to know why so many kids' authors engage in this level of redundancy.

Kate Moreton and the House at Riverton. Totally lack of understanding of period and the English setting. I think the writer is Australian.

So many anachronisms, housemaid wearing tights, and can afford a leather bound copy of a Sherlock Holmes novel. Small English village has a typing school.