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?

A character reading English at Imperial College

I'm reading a novel where a Professor of Archaeology has an office at Imperial - would this be correct/plausible?

[quote Wetoopere]@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![/quote]
Oh I agree - grew up in South Lakes and lived in Carlisle for a while.

The example was that a nice middle class girl from Yorkshire was pretending not to be familiar with slang from Barrow on the grounds that Yorkshire is "next to" Cumbria.

Well, why would she know? I don't know Barrow slang, and Yorkshire is fecking huge - my sister and I went to separate Yorkshire unis and the locals there would have been as clueless as us to Barrow slang.

(and whilst we're on Feck - I'd say Cumbrian feck is different to Irish feck!)

Just seemed like a cack handed way to show they'd done their research and ended up anything but.

@Iwantacampervan

A character reading English at Imperial College

I'm reading a novel where a Professor of Archaeology has an office at Imperial - would this be correct/plausible?

There certainly isn’t one there at the moment. If the character was doing something specifically science-y and high tech to do with ground scans or carbon dating then maybe it could be plausible, but it’s not likely.

@Iwantacampervan

A character reading English at Imperial College

I'm reading a novel where a Professor of Archaeology has an office at Imperial - would this be correct/plausible?

Imperial does almost entirely science, engineering, medicine, computing subjects, so I wouldn't have said so, no.

Where illustrations (if only a front cover) font match physical descriptions of people and places.

Where “real” towns are in the wrong place. I remember a book about Truro being in Devon. It’s not even close!!

Yes, @FourWordsImMuNiTy -- it did occur to me that you could have some kind of workaround like earth engineering linking with archaeology in the Crossrail project or something, but otherwise, no.

And frankly, most academics are lucky to have a usable office space at their own institution, far less to 'borrow' one somewhere else!

@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.

Tbf, this accurately describes me trying to get out of the bath when I've put soothing oils in it and let it drain. Except it was more like slippery flailing than determined crawling.

If the character was doing something specifically science-y and high tech to do with ground scans or carbon dating then maybe it could be plausible, but it’s not likely.
She is not - most of her time is taken up with being a TV Archaeologist and getting involved in a dig of a burial site in Scotland.
The line about the office is not enough to put me off the book but it jumped out at me as being a bit of poor research.

I love the Outlander series of books, but hate the 20 year gap between the events of book 1/2 and 3. I was so emotionally invested in the main characters' relationship and was devastated that they missed 20 years with each other.

@TheSandman but what you've given as an example is direct speech.

Reported speech is as follows: Jane said that she thought Leo was an idiot.

Direct speech: I think Leo is an idiot, said Jane.

Also direct speech: "I think Leo is an idiot," said Jane.

Breathed

I HATE when a character 'breathes' the sentences...

or Mouthed

This happens a lot in kids books and when i read to my children i just change to said or whispered according to sense, FFS

@ginghamstarfish my Dad swore blind he saw Some Like It Hot in colour at the cinema.

I did read that it was filmed in colour but Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon were so unconvincing as women in colour that it was released in black and white. I have often wondered if there were a few colour reels in circulation.

If I can't pronounce the names of the characters I can't picture them, and that puts me off. I'm not keen on American crime drama either, although I like the Patricia Cornwell books as an exception

Literally just reading a book where a character was named Clara and all of a sudden is Carla. So annoying.

@daisyoranges

A book where a woman worked as a part time maths tutor yet could afford a London house. I really liked the book but it did annoy me!

@daisyoranges is this the one where she kidnaps a teenage girl for her baby? That one left a bad taste in my mouth, so creepy

When I was a child I read loads, but could never get into a book that was written in the first person. Everyone at the time was reading The Babysitters Club and I couldn't get into them because of that. Now it doesn't bother me though

MolyHolyGuacamole - yes, a Lisa Jewell book!

Years ago I used to have a book blog. A self published author asked me to review their book. Premise was the main character was inspired by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to set up a restaurant or something, I forget the exact details. They’d spelled his name wrong in the blurb they sent. I declined as no attention to detail.

One book I read a few year ago had a main character whose name changed halfway through the book. It was written in flashback style from main characters perspectives and some chapters in present tense, from the author’s perspective. The character was known as ‘Jo’ and referred to by the author as ‘Josephine’ but then referred to herself in a later chapter as ‘Joanna’.

@KelKachoze Normal People did that. Not a speech mark in 300 pages. I managed to persevere and gradually got used to it but it was a slog.
(Sorry if this has been mentioned already!)

@MolyHolyGuacamole yes, that book also left me with a bad taste. Just WTF? I’ve done my best to forget I ever read it.

[quote itssquidstella]@TheSandman but what you've given as an example is direct speech.

Reported speech is as follows: Jane said that she thought Leo was an idiot.

Direct speech: I think Leo is an idiot, said Jane.

Also direct speech: "I think Leo is an idiot," said Jane.[/quote]
I'll happily stand corrected. The point I was trying to make in my original post about the missing speech marks was that there was an inconstancy between the start of the opening paragraph of the book and the end of it (and the rest of the book) where what the characters said to each other was always wrapped in "s.

Not only books but even more so TV programmes when someone is English but they just talk American with an English accent, eg "I am pissed as I went to the store and when I took my groceries out of the trunk my carton of PEAnut butter fell and broke on the sidewalk." Why bother having an English character at all?
Mind you I guess you could say the same about Jilly Cooper's "American" characters: "the ploughed field reminded her of shepherds pie," . . . oh really??

Not a book but when I watched Good Will Hunting I couldn’t get over the fact that Minnie Driver’s character was called Skyler/Schuyler. Would have been plausible with an American character but an English woman in her 20s, in the late 1990s? Nah.

@SocraticJunkieWannabe

No... but this reminds me of the fact that there is currently a 16ish year old character in Coronation Street called Kelly. Nothing wrong with the name but so anachronistic it really bugs me.

There are quite a few girls called Kelly in our local secondary!