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?

Ah, the gun over the mantle that is lovingly described and never goes off. Gotcha.

Artus, I'd forgotten what a disappointment that book was. I expected better and was cross as I ploughed away at it. I dont think it was a bin book, just a leave on a train book.

My biggest moment was in the Simon Sebag Montefiore Moscow Trilogy.

One of the characters had to worry about paying for an elite school and someone else had to pay the fees for hmm, in sector.

So far, so West London, except this was in Stalinist USSR and all schools were free, fees for schooling were unthinkable. He also had his characters do a school run.

I honestly don't get it, he's a historian and his works on Stalin and Russia as very well researched, why did he put this in his book I have no idea. Utterly baffling.

Just read the latest Marian Keyes, so many jokes. The main character Amy support 3 daughters & lots of expensive stuff on 60k.

There’s a storyline on an abortion that just doesn’t make sense.

Some crappy crime novel where the hero finds thirty pages of closely handwritten notes in eighteenth century Spanish, and then spends two hours translating it. Wish I could work that fast, that would take me a week and I've only been a professional for twenty years

I find the repetition of words really jarring. Lee Child always has cars 'nosing' into traffic. I'm reading an LJ Ross atm and her characters 'grit' or 'ground' out their words when irritated. I do enjoy both though.

I also read another book where the characters were all over the place. I nearly gave up when two characters are flirting, the woman being some shit-hot lawyer, dedicated to the job, and the man says 'you're a feisty little thing', unironically and she just giggles. Come on! She's probably been called that a 1000 times in the course of her career and I bet none of the men who did so got a shag! God, it annoyed me so much!

Lee Child is an anomaly for me. A friend is a fan and has most of his books. I believe I don't like 'his kind' of writing. Yet I've found myself on several occasions, idly picking one up, flicking through, then devoting a few hours to reading all of it. He can keep a story going on very little.

I also don't like it when two characters have similar names. I kept mixing up Alex and Adam in one novel, even though one of them was white and the other was black. I realise this makes me sound a bit thick.

The worst example of bad geography research I've ever read was in The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. I've never been to Lithuania, but it was very obvious that the author had never been there either. I think his research was limited to looking it up in an atlas and noting that the capital is Vilnius.

Using inactive Cornish train stations as places to alight. Good luck with that love ! Sometimes the vision of the character rolling out of the imaginary train like a hobo takes the sting out of the tale : mostly I want to beat/blow dart the Author gently with their own words. Whilst I’m on the subject, there technically is a taxi rank at Bodmin Parkway Station : however - unless you called a cab to sit there and collect you, you are proper out of luck and probably in for at least a forty five minute wait whilst arrangements are made. Your character did not get off the London train and just hop into an available taxi at the station.

I used to read the occasional Mills and Boon when I was younger, before they went all modern.
The heroes always used to have sardonic eyebrows. Wtf are sardonic eyebrows?!

Cattenberg, I do that too with similar names. Particularly in fantasy novels where all the names are made up and bear no resemblance to actual names, but all start with K. One of the David Eddings series has Kalten and Kurik and Bevier and Berit - I spent most of book 1 mixing them up. Oh, and the Anne McCaffrey books where everyone is called F'lon, F'nor, F'lar, F'nar etc.

On a related point, fantasy books where children are called a mixture of their parents'/grandparents' names, ie, the son of Lessa and F'lar is called F'lessan, or bloody Twilight with Renesmee. The reason this doesn't happen in real life is because it's bloody stupid!

I'm a fiction editor and so often when I read books for pleasure I wonder if they have been edited properly, or at all. I've seen some glaring typos in my time, and in books from major publishing houses too.

My gripe is the cynical, work weary but devilishly handsome FBI / CIA agent with a drinking problem and a traumatic past who has a deep seated mistrust of authority and a devil may care approach to the rules, despite being a high ranking official himself .
He then joins forces with a fiesty little thing ( who happens to be a black belt) and solves the crime of the century by recognising the umbrella stand is 2 inches too far to the left.

@Lancelottie

I once saw a review of a book I'd sweated blood over that said 'This book, while short, feels overlong' and thought, 'Mate, you don't know the half of it.' That particular one had had entire chunks of text repeated word for word, missing chapters and an author with attitude

But how do writers that bad get a contract?! I've always wondered that, when it's seemingly so difficult to get published.

I disagree with the comments about Cormoran Strike and his prosthesis - it's a part of his character and also the story line about his dedication to the agency, and also the absence of Robin because of her marriage - makes him a more sympathetic character, and also a more realistic hero.

The book The Little House by Philippa Gregory was recommended to me and it does cover an interesting topic (overbearing MIL) and is very creepy and atmospheric. BUT. The main character is depressed and goes on SSRIs. Thereafter she keeps taking a pill in stressful situations and feeing herself calm down instantly. THAT'S NOT HOW THEY WORK, fuck knows enough of us have been on them, and it's well-known they take a while to kick in and the effect depends on you taking them regularly, you don't just gulp one when you have a wobble! Really pissed me off. It's not as if she couldn't have researched it.

I haven't read all these books with the women looking at their obvious non-"flaws" in the mirror, who writes that nonsense? I would MUCH rather read that they grabbed their flab :o BTW though, one author who is very good on women's feeling about their bodies is Jenny Eclair, always realistic and funny, I love her books.

But I do get annoyed with Maggie O'Farrell for a lot of non-sequiturs, emotionally unrealistic plots and just cliched bollocks and cannot understand why she's so admired. I finally threw one across the room when someone "shovelled burning hot toast into their mouth" . Firstly I have never eaten toast that is actually hot. It never is hot by the time it's sat on the plate and been buttered, don't talk shite. And shovelling food into your mouth is a cliche of shocking proportions that no "literary" novelist should be using.

It annoys me that Hermione modifys her parents memories so they forget her then says a few chapters later that she's never performed the charm but she knows the theory.

Also read a book recently and the narrator said 'full disclosure' before explaining everything.

But how do writers that bad get a contract?! I've always wondered that, when it's seemingly so difficult to get published.

Yes I want to know this too, if writers are so totally shit that editors have to practically rewrite the book, why do those authors get published? Is it just based on plot or "in" themes?

And yes both in books and on TV, I dream of a detective who is nice, clever, has a decent home life and isn't some kind of haunted, alcoholic/chainsmoking wreck who's been banned from seeing their own kids for some mysterious reason. Just to ring the changes!

Chucked across the room; can't recall title or author but was a thriller with lead looking for her missing and possibly murdered sister. The proof she'd been done away with was due to there being a Sabatier knife in the kitchen. Ah ha, said our heroine, this knife cannot belong to my sister as she would have told me she had it. Exasperation. They're perfectly common things to own, like having a pair of socks. Anyone else sharing details of kitchen knives with family members?

When the author describes what the character is wearing when there is absolutely no need as it's completely irrelevant to the story.

So an author will say... "She appeared at the front door wearing a knee-length grey skirt and yellow jumper with flowers on the sleeve. Her hair was tied up messily in the nape of her neck"
...Then the book will move to talking about her past childhood trauma I'm left thinking why the fuck do I care then if she's wearing a grey skirt?

Now I get it if the clothes are relevant like... "She appeared at the front door wearing a yellow jumper which just grazed her navel and clung to the curve of her ample breasts like sea water on a rock"...
Then the woman at the door and the bloke answering the door went in and had mental passionate sex.

When this happens in books written by men about women's clothes, I always think no fucking woman of that age would wear that, you moron

No one in books ever find themselves desperately searching for a public toilet, or worse, finding one and recoiling in horror at it.

And they never have mundane jobs that they actually quite enjoy. It's always either something unusual and exciting, or else their fairly everyday type job is a plot device to show that they have a dull life. Whereas in real life millions of people are accountants/IT staff/work in a supermarket checkout and they quite enjoy it and it doesn't preclude them having a family mystery/a tragedy befall them/an amusing adventure.

When this happens in books written by men about women's clothes, I always think no fucking woman of that age would wear that, you moron

It's always a bit Norman Bates I think. Like I picture the male author rifling through his very elderly or dead mothers wardrobe thinking "Hmmm, what might my sexy 30-year oldflame-haired protagonist wear out of this?"

That's very true @treaclesoda

I was disappointed with "A Little Life" for that reason. I totally loved the book but I just didn't get why they all had to be such fucking superstars. Why couldn't they all just work at ASDA?

Bloobs, you yearn for Inspector Barnaby, he comes with very nice houses in beautiful part of the country, with lots of murders but hardly any blood. Seriously, I've no idea whether you can buy a book version of Midsummer Murders but I too wish someone would go lightly on the dysfunction for a change. Ruth Rendell had Inspector Wexford but I found them a bit tiresome after a while and they must be very dated now.

I once threw away a Kathryn Flett book. Not only was it terrible but she wrote about Mumsnet and 'their joke term Little Emperors'.

I mean WTF? Everyone knows its PFB. She obviously had never used the site and just made up some lazy unfunny expression.