Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Chat

Join the discussion and chat with other Mumsnetters about everyday life, relationships and parenting.

Original poster

Petty things that have put you off a book

594 replies

RosieLemonade · 20/03/2021 16:49

I have just finished a book based in 2017. Teenagers called Tim, Paul and Sarah. It really took me out of it.
Anyone been put off a book for a petty reason?

OP posts:
thevassal · 21/03/2021 20:02

I agree that the Lidl delivery and waitrose in Tunbridge Wells were the least of the inconsistencies in Thursday Murder Club. Apart from the police officers (one an inspector) happily given out confidential information to random pensioners against all code of policing ethics and GDPR (gross misconduct if not criminal), and random use of policey terms like "check ANPR" which didn't make any sense in the context they were used, the part that made me finally give up was when one of the pensioners found a missing person by getting a local mortician to provide her with the CCTV for the graveyard said missing person's brother was buried at so she could check the footage on the birthday of deceased brother for the last few years and thereby locate the car of the missing person visiting his graveside.

Apart from the odd choice of the use 'mortician' which isn't really used in this country, even if a council-run burial ground did happen to have CCTV pointing in exactly the right place, a random private undertaker would have no more access to it than any other member of the public, (ironically the police would be the best people to access it) and even if said mortician/undertaker could somehow access it, CCTV usually autodeletes after a week or so, at the most every 28 days, there wouldn't be months/years there to look through!

Also yes to the Peter James/Roy Grace Brighton series with the casual sexism and his impossibly perfect girlfriend who could have been a model but instead settled as a mortuary assistant. There was also a great part in the most recent book where he's seconded to London where he makes great strides in almost eradicating youth knife crime in the city in just the short few months he's there by....spending some of the budget on kitting out his team in expensive, cool new trainers. Because when they were wearing their old trainers it was obvious they were undercover cops but now all the 15 year old gang members are so impressed by the sleek new "kicks" they...don't realise they are being worn by a forty year old cop?

WhereHaveAllTheGoodTimesGone · 21/03/2021 20:05

Just thought of another one. When I am imagining what a character looks like and rejuvenation describes them completely differently to how I imagined and it messes with my head

MrsDoctorDear · 21/03/2021 20:37

@ElizabethinherGermanGarden sorry Grin

Funnily enough you don't get big hairy-arsed men padding about.

Interested in this thread?

Then you might like threads about this subject:

Books
sophs29 · 21/03/2021 20:42

Haha @dcb2 I think I would too if I had read them before watching the film! - although I made the mistake of watching the films first and now I can't properly enjoy the books as I just imagine the films in my head!

EineReiseDurchDieZeit · 21/03/2021 22:06

As a pp said, a series of similarly named characters of the same sex who are insufficiently differentiated. Kate Atkinson's Transcription seemed to have an endlessly supply of vaguely tweedy Englishmen called Godfrey, Oliver and Perry, and female antagonists called Nelly and Dolly, and managed to make spying incredibly dull

Agree on this and yes Transcription was
dull as with a highly improbable denouement. However, the worst ever offender in this category is A Song Of Ice And Fire aka Game Of Thrones

Not only are the families large, loads have really, really similar first names, and there are endless irrelevant background characters with these similar names.

EineReiseDurchDieZeit · 21/03/2021 22:08

Irvine Welsh is the worst offender for writing in dialect and being incomprehensible.

ChaToilLeam · 21/03/2021 22:10

I was reading a historical novel, and my home town was mentioned, and the location inaccurately described. It’s easy to find on a map. I was so annoyed!

ChaToilLeam · 21/03/2021 22:11

I do quite enjoy the dialect of the Irvine Welsh books. I lived in Leith for many years and it takes me back.

MsAwesomeDragon · 21/03/2021 22:18

Overuse of adjectives. It's weird but a book I've just read used far too many adjectives. One was never enough, it was 2 or 3 in EVERY description. It couldn't just smell sweet, it was a gentle, sweet, delicate scent. It just doesn't sound natural to do that ALL the time, and it jars after a while.

SingToTheSky · 21/03/2021 22:31

I find the adjectives especially jarring when they’re in actual dialogue. I just end up thinking FFS nobody talks like that!

BitOfFun · 21/03/2021 22:43

@ChaToilLeam

I do quite enjoy the dialect of the Irvine Welsh books. I lived in Leith for many years and it takes me back.
Same here! It's not difficult to understand at all if you're familiar with it in real life,
PferdeMerde · 21/03/2021 22:45

A sex scene in “Neuromancer” where she was repeatedly “impaling” herself on the man. I know it’s immature but the word choice made me squirm.

Also, it’s best to not comprehend Irvine Welsh. If you knew what his characters were saying and doing you’d be disgusted by the human race.

StealthPolarBear · 21/03/2021 23:03

This isn't petty but people who write the same book over and over again, just changing the names and settings.

Carbara · 21/03/2021 23:08

When males try to write women characters’ feelings/sensations/thoughts about sex, periods, or birth. So they fail so hard it’s embarrassing reading it. Like ‘she felt the baby kick inside her as they fell into a passionate kiss, her nipples grazed his chest/ Sarah felt the familiar pain in her stomach as she boobed across the garden to deal with her period. Boobs.’

Carbara · 21/03/2021 23:15

@CherryValanc

James Herbert's books have incredibly awful sex in them.

I think it's The Rats there's a "moist cave" reference. Also somewhat uneasy references about youth and a possible incestuous relationship.

I’ve read a couple of his books, his sex bits are grim. He’s obsessed with using the word ‘vermin’, too. And ‘hairy bodies’.
hagsrus0 · 21/03/2021 23:37

Overused adjectives: please enjoy

banilsson.blogspot.com/2012/06/cousin-lens-wonderful-adjective-cellar.html

DelurkingAJ · 21/03/2021 23:49

@RainbowCake

I've read 2 books lately that had a character named Caroline in them and they shortened it to Caro, it really jarred with me as I've never heard anyone in real life be called Caro. It's either their full name or Caz at a push. I'm probably being unreasonable and all the Carolines on MN are nicknamed Caro. One of these books also decided to change tense for a couple of pages which is infuriating.
That’s made me laugh as the two Carolines I know are both Caro to their families (Caz to friends).
Eastie77 · 22/03/2021 00:00

Not a book but I read an article about the U.K. in a well regarded US magazine that referred to Southampton as a suburb a couple of miles from South LondonConfused

OnceUponAMidnightBeery · 22/03/2021 00:27

[quote GreenSlide]@OnceUponAMidnightBeery the author had literally written into the book something like 'Joan was a loud woman who must have weighed seventeen stone. She never even seemed to notice her weight or want to do something about it.'

It was just completely random and nothing to do with the plot at all. Why did it need adding in that Joan wasn't outwardly concerned about her weight? Actually now I think about it maybe the author was a MNer. If I had continued to read, the book would probably have been full of everyone eating one massive salad a day. [/quote]
Oh sorry, my brain’s not working 🤦🏻‍♀️

Wait, surely not a massive salad?! 3 lettuce leaves and a radish. Weekly 😂

OnceUponAMidnightBeery · 22/03/2021 00:45

@UKhun

Anything by Lynda La Plante - I can't believe she wrote so many good TV scripts because she literally can't write dialogue!

Every character speaks in such a clunky. awkward way without any contractions - eg 'I did not do that' or 'I do not' or 'I am hungry'

I found that with Martina Cole. Her east-end gangster saying “Do you think I am a cunt?” 🤷🏻‍♀️
EineReiseDurchDieZeit · 22/03/2021 01:44

I knew a 12 yo Caroline who went by Caro

Postprandial · 22/03/2021 06:18

@StealthPolarBear

This isn't petty but people who write the same book over and over again, just changing the names and settings.
Yes, I’ve only read Lucy Foley’s fiction by numbers The Hunting Party, but I gather her next novel just changed the names and sent exactly the same generic demographic to a wedding on a remote island off the west of Ireland instead of a NY party in a remote hunting lodge in Scotland.

I wonder if they all met at Oxford too, and this is still shorthand for ‘not very nice’?

StealthPolarBear · 22/03/2021 06:39

Ah now I quite like the Lucy foley books although I take the point. I think you have to be a bit more obvious for me to pick it up.
Some of the chick lit authors, maybe.

CherryValanc · 22/03/2021 06:46

@ChaToilLeam

I do quite enjoy the dialect of the Irvine Welsh books. I lived in Leith for many years and it takes me back.
Grits is another where everyone is written in dialect. Each chapter is a different one.

I realy dislike jt when dialect us used for just on character.. expecially as it usually seems to be used to show he character isn't intelligent or is ignorant in some way.

sashh · 22/03/2021 06:55

Recaps in a series of books, I've already read 4 previous books you don't need to recap them, maybe the odd referral to a past incident but not a full recap of 4 books.

Sexism, not overt part of the plot but just inherent sexism. In 'the stand' every male knows how to ride a motorbike, no female does.

Lack of research, particularly when Americans assume things about the UK. Patriot games I'm looking at you. No bakers are not open on Xmas day and certainly no one is queuing at them, no patients do not leave hospital in a wheelchair, you even mentioned that it was the same rule as in the US, it isn't. No a small girl will not be invited to stay at Buckingham Palace and have dinner with the queen every night.