Petty things that have put you off a book

[RosieLemonade]

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?

@Dramallamabanana

Recently read a book which referred to a ‘sreaking child’. I can only assume they meant ‘shrieking’. They also confused ‘you’re’ and ‘your’ and ‘they’re’ with ‘there’ on two other occasions.

I was very surprised as the book was quite well written. Do books not get proof read now days?

Who published the book you mentioned? A publisher? Was it self published?

@SarahAndQuack

In historical fiction, I find it really irritating when authors confuse being able to write rich, descriptive passages with having done actual research.

Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet is a good example. I liked lots of it but no, no one in Shakespeare's England is going to be gobsmacked a woman has a kestrel. And I wasn't sold on the twee bit about the mother who was a bit otherworldly and the going to the woods to give birth.

This isn't books, but since a few people mentioned Outlander - in the TV show Claire's dull husband declares that she can't be pregnant by him as he's infertile (this may be in the books too but I require the eye candy to get past the truly shocking plotting). Does anyone know if that's realistic? I had a raised eyebrow about it for the early C20th, but maybe I'm wrong?

I went to a reading of Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell and she talked about the research she did for the book.

She basically planned to write it for about ten years, and in that time she planted a medicinal herb garden to learn about the different herbs that were grown in that time, and learned to fly a kestrel.

This is why I only want to write contemporary fiction, I couldn't be bothered with that level of research!

@UnderHisAye Yes, I've heard her talk about the research she did too. Unfortunately there wasn't enough of it!

She's just plain wrong about quite a lot of things and it grates.

I forgive her almost anything because her writing is so great

Oh, it is! I loved a lot of that book. I'm just easily irritated.

To be fair there are many worse historical writers, and that's not even her main 'thing'.

I read a whole series and was on to the last book. Previous books had told how two characters were once friends for a short period, but then grew apart. In the last book, it said that the characters were long standing old friends and met regularly for lunch. I couldn’t read any further.

[quote SarahAndQuack]@UnderHisAye Yes, I've heard her talk about the research she did too. Unfortunately there wasn't enough of it!

She's just plain wrong about quite a lot of things and it grates.[/quote]
I had literally just read the first chapter or so Hamnet wandering lengthily around the house when I put it down and picked up something else, about a fortnight ago, so interested to hear this, as I actually wasn't that engaged, as it's out of character for me to stop reading something I've started. It seemed a bit hand-wavy and sort of wafty -- I think I had just come to vaguely pagan Anne in her garden.

Though I am also not a fan of novelists who've (laudably) done their research but then put every fragment of it into the text somewhere in a quite heavy-handed way. I mean, just because you're amused in 2021 at the existence of the Groom of the Stool or the methods Victorian prostitutes used for contraception doesn't mean it would even register with a contemporary, and paragraphs about either make your supposedly 1500 courtier or 1870 brothel madam sound like a timetraveller.

It took me a wee while to get into it too actually @Postprandial

When you do it's worth it. There's a chapter that traces the journey of the flea that brings plague to the shores of Britain...it's absolutely jaw droppingly breathtaking writing.

I can't read it again just now - a global pandemic that kills a boy the same age as my son feels a bit close to home!

@postprandial - OMG, yes. Or when people want to tell you how SMELLY the past was with ALL THE SMELLS and the REALLY HEAVY STINK, as if everyone in 1492 walked around analysing the exact olfactory qualities of everyday life.

@SarahAndQuack, yes. I'm trying to think which novel it was that I read a while back that seemed obsessed with Terribly Smelly Smells its characters would be unlikely to have registered in such detail. It might have been Iain Pears' An Instance of the Fingerpost, and I think I ended up mostly thinking of John Locke, Richard Boyle and co primarily in terms of their personal stenches.

I know this is extremely petty, but I read a book where somebody said "her eyes were the exact colour of sapphires". Sapphires can be practically any colour, and any shade of blue "Her eyes looked like sapphires" wouldn't have bothered me, it was the pinning it down that got on my nerves!

@tenlittlecygnets It was an actual published book which I bought in Waitrose last week!

@Fkrkrodps

I read a whole series and was on to the last book. Previous books had told how two characters were once friends for a short period, but then grew apart. In the last book, it said that the characters were long standing old friends and met regularly for lunch. I couldn’t read any further.

Don't get sucked into the Lewis Trilogy by Peter Mays then.

First two books - delicate unfolding of the main few characters personal histories over several decades.

Last book - his best friend who lives a mile or two away who hasn't been mentioned at all, plus also the main character used to roadie for the international hit band that formed in their tiny Scottish village but everyone was too polite to mention it in spite of it intersecting significantly with several key parts of the history already spelled out.

I've just thought of an example of shoe horning in facts

It's just an easy Felix Francis - y'know son of Dick Francis. I always loved his novels. I knew what I was getting.

Anyway in the latest one there are a good few pages about Suzy Lamplugh. To do with the legalities I think? Anyway it was really clumsy.

Dick Francis always wrote crime novels usually set on a racecourse.

This just left me uncomfortable as it seemed to be a few passages lifted from Wikipedia.

Which one, @Dramallamabanana? Some of the biggest publishers pay editors and proofreaders the lowest rates...

To be fair on some of those authors, I do pad softly through the house and often make my husband jump when I silently appear behind him

It doesn't put me off the book because I don't see it until the end, but I find acknowledgements than run to five pages, full of gushing and cryptic references, really annoying. Just thank the people who helped you - no need for anything more.

The author writing in a dialect they know nothing about.

'Ey, up ah says. Ast thee seen thy lass? She were up at t'beck last neet, tha knows'

A police Chief Inspector speaking to a Detective Inspector. In Leeds. Yorkshire folk don't all sound like they've just fallen out of an episode of Last Of The Summer Wine. And I'm from Salford. Christ knows what anyone from Leeds would have thought.

Recently read a book which referred to a ‘sreaking child’. I can only assume they meant ‘shrieking’. They also confused ‘you’re’ and ‘your’ and ‘they’re’ with ‘there’ on two other occasions.

Could also have been 'skrieking' which is north west England dialect for crying. But definitely not 'sreaking'. The other examples are unforgivable in a published novel.

I gave up on a reread of a science fiction novel when the author (who was usually pretty good on his physics) had someone crawling determinedly across a 'frictionless surface'.

How?

'Nearly frictionless' I could have lived with but 'frictionless'? No way.

@iklboo

The author writing in a dialect they know nothing about.

'Ey, up ah says. Ast thee seen thy lass? She were up at t'beck last neet, tha knows'

A police Chief Inspector speaking to a Detective Inspector. In Leeds. Yorkshire folk don't all sound like they've just fallen out of an episode of Last Of The Summer Wine. And I'm from Salford. Christ knows what anyone from Leeds would have thought.

I like reading books set in Cumbria using dialect I've never heard of!

Too many characters seems to be a problem with quite a few books, particularly if they have fairly ordinary names and not a clear physical description. I like to imagine them in my head as I read, but so often now I end up jotting down a list to remind me who they are!

[quote Dramallamabanana]@tenlittlecygnets It was an actual published book which I bought in Waitrose last week![/quote]
That’s awful!

@TheSandman

I gave up on a reread of a science fiction novel when the author (who was usually pretty good on his physics) had someone crawling determinedly across a 'frictionless surface'.

How?

'Nearly frictionless' I could have lived with but 'frictionless'? No way.

Surely the way to move across a truly frictionless surface is to make sure you're facing the way you want to go and then fart?

I recently read a book where the VERY FIRST word was spelled as untill not until. You would think the copy editor would be able to get the first word right.