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?

Good grief airport 😳 was that a self published or regular published?!

However, the worst ever offender in this category is A Song Of Ice And Fire aka Game Of Thrones

One hundred years of solitude has seventeen characters all called Aureliano Buendias

Regularly published. I was not impressed.

@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?

Male infertility was medically investigated and written about in science journals from at least the late 19th century onwards and in 1945 the Family Planning Association (FPA) opened a dedicated seminological (sperm examination) centre in the UK so fairly plausible boring!Frank would know about his infertility c.1947 - or at least more plausible than a lot of the rest of Outlander's historical accuracy although that's not saying much....!

YY, I have heard other knowledgeable people having the horrors about Outlander in general. But that's good to know. Poor boring Frank!

@BashfulClam

One where they used ‘should of...’ erm eh? Also a book by Ben Elton where he used Glaswegian dialect so well until he referred to a male as ‘hen’, any Scot knows that you only ever call females ‘hen’ never a male.

I call DH "hen".

One night he kept asking "you alright, hen?" so I replied "I'm alright, hen" and it stuck

@BlackAmericanoNoSugar

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?

Newton's Third Law has never been better explained.

@KeflavikAirport

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.

Oh oh oh! I can beat that! I once started a book where there was a typo before the book even started! It was only after reading the baffling opening paragraph three or four times that I realised that what I was reading was reported speech but, somehow, the opening speech marks had been omitted.

I don't think reported speech needs inverted commas (speech marks) @TheSandman

I'm not usually such a pedant but I worked in Year 6 last year

I started reading a book last week where the very first sentence had buses spelt as busses.

I know grammar is becoming less important with stuff like social media (I’m not one to criticise mumsnetters’ grammar for example and I’m aware mine is far from perfect) but it is really, really disappointing that actual published books aren’t being edited properly. It’s certainly one thing where falling standards can’t be blamed on covid :o

FFS though. I’ve actually often thought I’d love to do something like copy editing as a job (having done some casually for a self publishing author, she hand wrote it all and is dyslexic and I typed it for her) but I’ve always worried I’m not good enough to actually be employed/freelance.

@SmidgenofaPigeon

There’s a thread in classics that I started describing ridiculous things in books. Here’s one of mine. Don’t ask me what book it was from but it gave me the rage.

‘We took the central line to South Kensington and emerged to the splendid grandeur of the Royal Albert Hall’

No, you absolute twat you did not. The central line goes now where near. The PICCADILLY AND DISTRICT AND CIRCLE LINES do but you would emerge to the ‘splendid grandeur of Ben’s Cookies’.

Really tickled by the splendid grandeur of Ben’s Cookies

I start and abandon loads of books, most of them free review copies, sometimes library books. The usual reason for giving up is poor grammar, lack of editing and proofreading. There also seems to be a curious modern fashion for not using punctuation, which can make sentences hard to understand. Lack of basic fact checking is another thing that bugs me - the author or publisher should know that someone will pick up on those things. For example a recent book described someone going to the cinema in the 1960s, and said that 'Some Like it Hot' was the first colour film they had seen. It was B&W. A little later they mentioned seeing Danny Kaye in 'Singing in The Rain' - he was not in that film. Small things but enough to let the reader know that the author and/or publisher didn't care enough to check such things, in which case I don't care enough to continue reading.

@thecatsthecats Cumbria dialect varies massively around the county though. Mix of Geordie, Lancashire, Cumbrian Farmer, West coast. I worked 20 miles away from home and learned new words!

I find it sad that standards of written English are so poor these days. With books, we might find it understandable that self-published books can have errors, as the writers either don't know, or don't want the expense of paying someone to proofread. However most of the books I see and reject are from actual publishing houses, where presumably they employ proofreaders and editors. God knows how they get these jobs.

I really hadn't thought the frictionless surface thing through properly. If you use farting as propellant then it means you're not in a space suit, so there must be atmosphere, and air resistance will slow you down again. You'd be better off lying on your stomach and doing the breast stroke using the air resistance to your advantage as though it's less-dense water.

If there's a vacuum and you're in a space suit then farting is only going to make life more unpleasant and not propel you anywhere. Spacesuits generally have thrusters built in so they would work.

@SingleHandSue

Tom Cruise playing Jack Reacher. Never read another after that.

I've never read the books but I think Tom Cruise is fab in the films. My colleague read the books first and says Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher is just all kinds of wrong 😂

Oh oh oh! I can beat that! I once started a book where there was a typo before the book even started!

Oh, oh! I can beat THAT! I read a book where the title was misspelt on the COVER!

A little later they mentioned seeing Danny Kaye in 'Singing in The Rain' - he was not in that film

To be fair, I thought Danny Kaye and Donald O'Connor were the same person for ages!

I’ve just finished a book with the title misspelled on the spine.

To be fair copy editing is one of those things everybody thinks they can do, but it’s a whole lot harder than it looks.

Surely you have to actually prove your worth before getting hired though! How are people getting these jobs?!

Comma splices are terrible in "proper" published books; I actually see them as one of the hallmarks of self-published work, but they're more and more prevalent in traditionally-published books. It really grates and suggests the author cannot actually write at all, or at least has no ear for language.

I enjoyed Hamnet but winced a bit at the end when she says that she thinks Hamnet's dying of the plague was what led to Shakespeare not mentioning plague often in his plays. After this year I feel it's much more likely that he was sick and tired of it! Certainly I have zero appetite for fiction or drama about Covid, and I doubt I ever will. But she couldn't have known that then!

As a proofreader and editor, I can tell you that some authors are very wedded to their own idiosyncratic spellings, commas, dangling participles and even facts.

@Gerla

A little later they mentioned seeing Danny Kaye in 'Singing in The Rain' - he was not in that film

To be fair, I thought Danny Kaye and Donald O'Connor were the same person for ages!

I had that issue too.

Top tip: if he dances really well, it's Donald O'Connor. It's why in White Christmas there's a couple of dance sequences with a random unnamed dancer — Donald O'Connor was meant to do it, was ill and was replaced with Danny Kaye who couldn't dance well enough for the numbers.

(I agree it should have been checked for the book though!)

@DuckyMcDuck

I don't think reported speech needs inverted commas (speech marks) *@TheSandman*

I'm not usually such a pedant but I worked in Year 6 last year

It does if you use it everywhere else in the book and close the sentence in question with one. I understand that reported speech doesn't need quote marks - try reading novels in French where they seem to be optional even when the author inserts characterisation in the middle of a speech.

A very simple example, at random, from the nearest book to hand:

• J'aime cet endroit, déclara Thérèse. Je le trouve très reposant.
• I love this place, declared Theresa. I find it very relaxing.