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?

And in Stieg Larsson’s ‘Girl With..’ books, Lisbeth Salander is repeatedly referred to as anorexic when according to the rest of the text she has zero psychological issues surrounding food, she’s just really skinny. Maybe an issue of bad translation more than anything but that really annoyed me because it’s not just a banal wee word that you chuck about to describe how someone looks.

Yes, the English woman called Peyton in CSI Manhattan. Just no.

I got the yoga part in A Discovery of Witches and just stopped. FFS.

Over research is nearly as bad as under research

Here’s a very long description about a minor plot point, which I’m shoehorning in because I’ve spent ages researching it.

Also hate people ‘padding’ anywhere, what even is it?

I’ve also read a book about someone sending money to an English relative ‘for surgery’. How much research would it take to find out you don’t pay for surgery here?

I read a book once that was set in the exact neighbourhood I lived and grew up in. It kept mentioning the park at the end of my road, a parade of shops less than 5 mins walk away a local theatre where I had drama lessons as a kid and we used to rent out for birthday parties etc. It really jarred and the references felt so shoehorned in - almost as if the book was targeted to be sold in my area only and different versions were released in other areas with their own local references. I don’t think I could even finish it!
I’ve read so many books set in london, and obviously they’ll sometimes contain references to places I’ve been to, but in this book the details just seemed so unnecessarily specific.

I haven’t read the whole thread and this has probably been mentioned already, but there’s an Ian rankin book where a group of teenagers have ridiculously middle aged names. One with a unlikely name would be fine, but all four? Nope.

Books where the author has finished a series but then decided to write more due to a successful tv series (or a film). Often not as good as the originals.

@Freshprincess

Over research is nearly as bad as under research

Here’s a very long description about a minor plot point, which I’m shoehorning in because I’ve spent ages researching it.

Also hate people ‘padding’ anywhere, what even is it?

I’ve also read a book about someone sending money to an English relative ‘for surgery’. How much research would it take to find out you don’t pay for surgery here?

I've noticed that the kitchen is where most of us pad to in books!

I do love this thread, it's brilliant reading everyone's niggles! Unlikely habits of characters

• see Nikki French's Frieda Klein novels where she rarely consumes anything more than a black coffee, but walks miles across London, usually in the middle of the night?

Books where the author has finished a series but then decided to write more due to a successful tv series (or a film). Often not as good as the originals.

And usually change the main character to look more like the actor playing him - I totally went off the Frost books once 'they were written' for David Jason.

Oops. Meant to add in also where books have been altered due to a tv series. Lewis in Morse books was originally a a middle aged welshman but was later changed in the books to match the tv Lewis.

Mine is beyond petty, and is the same for films; if my sil tells me to read or watch, I give them a swerve. I've lost so much time watching films or trying to read books she said were amazing that I just nod and smile and make a mental note to avoid.

Loved reading these, agree with so many! For me, it's any book where the main female character is a Mary-Sue. I hope I'm using that in the right context. I mean that the character is so SPECIAL and DIFFERENT and NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS. Usually accompanied by a description of her as she looks in a mirror and laments her pale skin, unruly hair etc.
Ive read so many books lately that don't live up to the hype and they get flung after a couple of chapters.
Men writing women can be hilarious and infuriating. Terrible sex scenes centred on how amazing his penis is. Female characters described solely in terms of their perceived sexual attractiveness. (Not sure that's a word, actually?)
I can't read books with lots of dialect. Just looking at a page of Irvine Welsh gives me a headache! Maybe I'd feel differently if I spoke that particular dialect.
I generally have no preference as to POV although I do find anything written in the second person comes across as stylistic posturing. (Nicked that from a PP, what a wonderful description!)

On the second page we were told of her "baby blue bra clasping her breasts"
I didn't read any further.

@Tiktokersmiracle

Mine is beyond petty, and is the same for films; if my sil tells me to read or watch, I give them a swerve. I've lost so much time watching films or trying to read books she said were amazing that I just nod and smile and make a mental note to avoid.

That's not petty at all sometimes it's blindingly obvious that someone has all the taste of a blind hedgehog in a bag, or even perfectly good taste, but one that doesn't match yours so you're quite right to avoid.

I mean, someone who raves about The Da Vinci Code (novel or film), or is capable of reading or watching either without giggling in places where that was not the intention of the writer/director, is definitely not going to be someone I'm going to for recommendations.

First page, a quarter down, said she was a wiccan witch. Immediately came off of it, haven't gone back to it since.

Agree about books with too much dialect. Just can't get through it.
Or featuring any character who earns a bare minimum wage yet lives in central London/Paris/Manhattan and has lots of spare time and cash for adventures.

@Mysillystory

First page, a quarter down, said she was a wiccan witch. Immediately came off of it, haven't gone back to it since.

I don't really know anything about Wicca - curious as to why this is incorrect (or is it that you're not keen on witchcraft)?

I read a lot of graphic novels comic books.

Things that make me put them down - or more likely not pick them up in the first place - include covers with spherical breasted super-heroines in swimsuit costumes doing that spine-bending pose that shows the maximum of bum and boob.

Once I have picked one up though, a quick flip through will immediately tell me if it contains 'put this shit down' trigger number two - which is explosive head trauma. I try to buy comics at cons from independent artists. Being a comic creator myself I know how hard it is to get people to look at your stuff let alone get them to buy it. At most cons here in the UK I will flip through other people's books and in nine books out of ten (it seems) gritty realism can only be expressed by amateur comic book makers by having someone shove a huge gun in another character's mouth and blow their brains out of the back of their head. These panels are often the ones that the artist has obviously spent more than the usual amount of time on with a level of graphic detail that doesn't need exploring.

Another nitpicky put down trigger for me is the misuse of the capitol letter I in comic book lettering fonts. Without getting too technical comic books are lettered in upper case. There are two different uppercase Is in comic book fonts. One with serifs and one without. The seriffed one is only used for the first person pronoun and acronyms. The non-seriffed one is used for everything else.

Seeing a serrifed letter I in the middle of a word is a giveaway of sloppy editing/writing/proofreading and I've got better things to waste my time on.

That’s interesting sandman I never knew that about the I thing!

I remember DH flat out refusing to continue reading a Harlan Coben novel (favorite author) because the description of a front door (pivotal to the plot if I remember correctly), did NOT match the picture of the door on the front cover.

Dickhead.

I read a lot of graphic novels comic books

[looks at username]

Yeah, that checks out.

The impossible spines of the female characters as per Milo Manara put me off as well - even the latest Black Widow publicity still had to make her breasts expand beyond the sides of her rib cage.

But then again, the idea of Thor: Love and Thunder because there's a woman involved as a main character, it has to be about love? Fuck's sake.

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.

Yes, undigested research is very offputting. I loved A S Byatt's The Children's Book, apart from the fact she kept on dropping in long paragraphs about what Virginia Woolf and her circle were doing at the time.

@LondonStone I read loads of American books growing up (Babysitters Club, Sweet Valley High!) and enjoyed finding out what things meant if I didn’t understand them and that was in the 90s. No excuse to not find out what crumpets are in 2009 if you don’t know.
As a child I bought a book from a car boot. There was a typo all the way through where 'mum' was written as 'mom'
I thought I was so clever and changed every 'O' to a 'u' 🙈 obviously years later I realised it must have been an American book.

The worst book I ever read I picked up because it was set in my small home town. It turned out to be a vanity-press printed rant about the woes of a straight white married employed man in his 50s, ie that women dared not hang on his every word and immigrants dared to exist. Phrases like "I'm not racist" or "she said I was being racist because" were at least two per page.
And he spelt it 'rascist' every time.

I gave up on Cornwell when Benton magically came back to life despite Scarpetta having seen his body, and Marino had a personality transplant. Then there was one where she seemed to simply forget the previous 6 books, which I couldn't really object to the wishful thinking.

I can't stand long sci-fi names with random capitals and apostrophes - any alien with a name like that is going to be called Bob or similar. Present tense is a bit of a warning sign as it's often used by poor authors.

I can't stand long sci-fi names with random capitals and apostrophes - any alien with a name like that is going to be called Bob or similar.

This, also fantasy fiction LOTR type names.