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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:
AgentCooper · 25/03/2021 20:28

This is reminding me of reading Sweet Valley High books, where every single fucking book had a drawn out section about the twins’ perfect size six figures, golden hair and tans. And how their mum was so pretty she could be their sister.

PolkadotsAndMoonbeams · 25/03/2021 20:43

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.

The only abridged book I own (not that I'm a snob about it or anything, but if I'm going to pay £££ I want everything they wrote!) is Les Miserables, after I found myself going through with tabs to mark the pages where the actual story picked up again after Victor Hugo had got the Paris sewer system/battle of Waterloo/French factory building out of his system.

HappyDaysToCome · 25/03/2021 20:44

I can’t stand a series of books where the main characters in book 1 become minor characters in book 2.

Look, I’ve invested a lot in the characters in book 1. I don’t want to suddenly only see them only from book 2 characters’ point of view.

Likewise if it moves down a generation part-way through a series.

Interested in this thread?

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Books
AnaofBroceliande · 25/03/2021 20:46

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?

Of course people do, increasingly often and not even for cosmetic reasons. The NHS is behind in a lot of things. Simon Cowell even paid for one of the BGT contestants to have scoliosis surgery in the US with a procedure the NHS doesn't use here but which is far better.

PolkadotsAndMoonbeams · 25/03/2021 20:53

There also a children's/YA fantasy writer who alters names slightly for her own purposes. So one of the gods is Mithros (Mithras) and a big trading centre/empire is Carthak (Carthage). There are lots more examples as well, but then there are also some completely made up place names as well.

I know there are only so many names you can make up, but I could never decide whether it was meant to be some sort of in-joke or not.

sueelleker · 25/03/2021 21:20

@AgentCooper

This is reminding me of reading Sweet Valley High books, where every single fucking book had a drawn out section about the twins’ perfect size six figures, golden hair and tans. And how their mum was so pretty she could be their sister.
Elizabeth did put on some weight when they went to SVU though. She had to (DIET!!)
AgentCooper · 25/03/2021 22:21

@sueelleker omg I remember that! Nobody would even know they were TWINS anymore!

LemonMeringueThreePointOneFour · 25/03/2021 22:56

Great thread!

I remember a series where the characters repeatedly "nodded negatively" rather than shaking their heads like normal people. That was distracting.

LondonStone · 26/03/2021 02:27

@JustNotFunAnymore hahahaha, that’s brilliant! Grin

I was totally baffled by the word Connecticut and read it as Connect-eye-cut. I remember hearing it for the first time (that I remember, anyway!) a few years later and it was like OHHHHHHH!

Stillamum3 · 26/03/2021 02:59

I gave up on one book, set in England in the 19th Century, after Lady something or other was drinking tea from a MUG! The author had not bothered to research the manners of the time.

PolkadotsAndMoonbeams · 26/03/2021 09:09

Even more petty, because it doesn't relate to the contents at all, but if I've been buying a series and the covers change halfway through for no apparent reason.

MorrisZapp · 26/03/2021 09:16

Craig Ferguson is a Scottish comedian who became a successful US talk show host. His autobiography states that he played a run of shows at the Assembly Room.

I was fucking disgusted with that, any Edinburgh resident or any comedy fan anywhere in the world knows its the Assembly Rooms. ROOMS. Not fucking ROOM.

It ruined the whole book for me (actually it didn't, what really ruined the book was him referring to sharing a Glasgow APARTMENT with Peter Capaldi) but I do forgive him because he's pretty tidy to be fair, and also because he reveals his affair with Mrs Miggins of pie shop fame.

Monkeyrock · 26/03/2021 09:16

@TheSandman

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.

I think that's more a stylistic/typeface thing - many novels (particularly if they start with that much larger first letter) don't include the quote marks before it if it opens with speech. I assume it's a style hangover from the days of letter block printing, when those books wouldn't often open with someone in mid-flow of conversation.

AgentCooper · 26/03/2021 09:46

@MorrisZapp

Craig Ferguson is a Scottish comedian who became a successful US talk show host. His autobiography states that he played a run of shows at the Assembly Room.

I was fucking disgusted with that, any Edinburgh resident or any comedy fan anywhere in the world knows its the Assembly Rooms. ROOMS. Not fucking ROOM.

It ruined the whole book for me (actually it didn't, what really ruined the book was him referring to sharing a Glasgow APARTMENT with Peter Capaldi) but I do forgive him because he's pretty tidy to be fair, and also because he reveals his affair with Mrs Miggins of pie shop fame.

@MorrisZapp Glasgow apartment Grin Grin

Aye what would one of those be then?!

iklboo · 26/03/2021 10:16

I've just read a book set in NW England where the authors had has called her handbag a purse and her calling on her cell phone. Really grating. Never in the history of flat caps & whippets have we said 'purse' & 'cell phone'.

iklboo · 26/03/2021 10:16

*author has

UnderHisAye · 26/03/2021 10:29

@MorrisZapp

Craig Ferguson is a Scottish comedian who became a successful US talk show host. His autobiography states that he played a run of shows at the Assembly Room.

I was fucking disgusted with that, any Edinburgh resident or any comedy fan anywhere in the world knows its the Assembly Rooms. ROOMS. Not fucking ROOM.

It ruined the whole book for me (actually it didn't, what really ruined the book was him referring to sharing a Glasgow APARTMENT with Peter Capaldi) but I do forgive him because he's pretty tidy to be fair, and also because he reveals his affair with Mrs Miggins of pie shop fame.

I don't get why it's annoying when it's so obviously written for a US audience (the apartment thing, not the room/s thing).
Maverick197 · 26/03/2021 10:35

@RaraRachael

If a book is set in the USA or told in the first person, I won't read it
I'm the same!

I also don't like books that are written in diary format. Any book that starts "Dear Diary" gets immediately deleted from my kindle.

Wildern · 26/03/2021 10:56

@MorrisZapp

Craig Ferguson is a Scottish comedian who became a successful US talk show host. His autobiography states that he played a run of shows at the Assembly Room.

I was fucking disgusted with that, any Edinburgh resident or any comedy fan anywhere in the world knows its the Assembly Rooms. ROOMS. Not fucking ROOM.

It ruined the whole book for me (actually it didn't, what really ruined the book was him referring to sharing a Glasgow APARTMENT with Peter Capaldi) but I do forgive him because he's pretty tidy to be fair, and also because he reveals his affair with Mrs Miggins of pie shop fame.

But if he's famous in the US, isn't the text aimed at an US audience, hence 'apartment' etc? A UK novelist friend is always having arguments with her American editor, who wants to turn mobiles into cellphones, handbags into purses etc for the US edition, even when the novel is set in London.
RaraRachael · 26/03/2021 11:07

Maverick197 I'm glad I'm not the only one Grin
I can't read books by American authors either as they seem to use about 20 words when 3 would do. I remember getting loaned an Amish trilogy that a friend absolutely raved about. I think I managed one chapter of the wordy rubbish before I returned them.
It's the same with American recipes. I don't need the cook's life history of where her granny lived and what occasions she made the recipe for....just list the ingredients and tell me how to make it.

WelcomeMarch · 26/03/2021 11:23

[quote Monkeyrock]**@TheSandman

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.

I think that's more a stylistic/typeface thing - many novels (particularly if they start with that much larger first letter) don't include the quote marks before it if it opens with speech. I assume it's a style hangover from the days of letter block printing, when those books wouldn't often open with someone in mid-flow of conversation.[/quote]
Speaking as a veteran of the rigid publisher’s style guide, oh the woes in the office if the author insisted on an opening quote that clashed with the rule of Opening Dropped Cap for the first character!

IthinkIsawahairbrushbackthere · 26/03/2021 11:24

Bad geography - a novel set in the county where I live. One character living in town A had a minimum wage job in a bar in town B where she would work for an hour or so each day. The two towns are an hour apart by road or two hours by public transport. Town B added nothing to the plot. There were plenty of bars in Town A or within a 10 minute drive. The author just wanted to include the name. It annoyed me so much I have never read another book by her!

DadOnIce · 26/03/2021 12:51

@indecisivewoman81

I've just finished a book where one of the main characters was called Topher. It really annoyed me.
Dave Eggers' brother is called that in 'A Staggering Work of Pretentious Annoying Genius' or whatever it's called, isn't he? I found it quite irritating too. I assumed that his name was Christopher and they'd lopped off the wrong bit, like calling a Benjamin 'Jamin' or a Nicholas 'Cholas'.
DadOnIce · 26/03/2021 13:09

@SingToTheSky

Ah thanks re the carding, I’ve never heard of it before!

:o at the genderfluid sheep. Or was it non baanery?

Presumably its pronouns are he/ewe...
WelcomeMarch · 26/03/2021 13:10

To be fair, a friend’s little boy did pronounce it Tiffer or Kiffer until he was about three. It’s cute from a toddler.