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?

I'm fond of a non-fiction travel guide by an American woman, in which she advises her readers that if they want to ask someone to phone them, they should say "Just give me a tinkle on the telly".

I wonder if anyone tried it.

@Billandben444

I won't read anything written in dialect (just say at the start he's from Glasgow and I'll use my imagination) or long pages with no paragraphs. I read a psychological thriller recently written in the first person where she was killed at the end - what!

Was this Sister? Annoyed the hell out of me! She’s supposed to be writing letters to her dead sister, so yeah while she’s being attacked at the end she writes it all down..

God yes! That old trope of attractive female characters appraising their naked bodies in full length mirrors. Sometimes they even trace the outline of their (full or heavy) breasts and their hips with one finger. They aren't sucking their stomachs in and standing sideways on and they never spot and squeeze a blemish. No, they are doing this abstractedly.

It's the written equivalent to the cinematic lie about the way women shower. Any peeping Tom would be heartbroken I think, to see the average woman scrubbing away at fanjo, pits and crack instead of arching her back and slowly gliding her hands over her foamy breasts and down her body.

A thriller by Helen Macinnes in which the main character goes into a pub in London to meet someone. Next sentence “When the waitress brought him his drink .....”. Grr!

Oh and a Frederick Forsyth novel with a minor bit of geographical inexactitude put me off the whole book (the beet factory in my local town being on the wrong side of the road the villain was on).

Re stock phrases - in P D James novels, so many women wear skirts “in fine wool” and have “carefully chosen” items of furniture.

Re my P D James reference - how does anyone else KNOW the furniture is carefully chosen, anyway?

It annoys me when the male characters in a book call their girlfriends/wives "sweetheart" all the time.

These books are always written by a man, too.

Read children's book with DS recently. Set present day. Primary school children in East London getting bus to a (state) school without parents, wearing blazers and ties and being given detentions. Idk, maybe things are different in other schools but it seemed to me unlikely to reflect most primary age children's experience. Also characters unable to find pomegranate for sale in shops, which seemed a bit weird.

Any book where the female protagonist can have sex with any guy she wishes.

Bridget Jones
Girl On The Train

In response to the OP - in 2017 I knew teenagers called Sarah and Paul. Though not Tim, which I do believe is the wettest name known to humankind.

The Outlander series was painful - particularly when Claire was crashing around French aristocratic circles and the author clearly had no idea that she would have been giving offence at every turn. Claire is supposed to be a time travelling mid-20th c English woman but actually she’s a late 20th c American.

YES - nothing about her rang true for a British nurse in the late 1940s

Poorly researched geography is one of my big turnoffs. I'm still wincing about the book set mostly in Norfolk that had the characters take a day trip to Stanton Drew. A very long day but just about do-able if you must i guess. Even a cursory glance at the map before writing would have shown that Stanton Drew does not have a sea view and the motorways really don't join up like that.

Speaking of children's books, why oh why are so many of them written in twee silly little rhyming verses. I'd far rather read a story to my pupils where I could put my own expression and emphasis on words to make the story fun or interesting for them, rather then contrived nonsense that relies on words chosen because they supposedly rhyme rather than being the best words in the context - FFS "farmers" rhyming with "pyjamas"

The kids couldn't care less if it rhymes. A particular author is guilty of this and I hate reading their books out loud even though I'm seen as a bit of a philistine for not thinking they're marvellous

I could never bring myself to read The Curious incident of the Dog in the Night Time because I found the cover illustration so upsetting. It showed a drawing of a German Shepherd with a fork in its side. I owned 2 German Shepherds at the time.

I thought the dog in the Curious Incident was a standard poodle?

On a similar topic, in The Book Thief, the narrator says something like: I don't look anything like people think you know, I am not a skeleton with a cloak and a scythe.

So, what's the picture on the front of the book . . . ? Three guesses!

@Spanielsarepainless

“Same author - flags snapping and shoes polished to a chestnut shine.”

What’s wrong with these? ‘Flags snapping’ is about the sharp crack they make when blowing in the wind, and I can’t see the issue with chestnut shine - are conkers not very shiny?

I feel like "chestnut sheen" sounds better than "shine", but that might be personal preference. I don't know what's wrong with flags snapping.

It's interesting how people don't like places they know used but altered slightly. I thought that was a fairly standard thing authors do if they use a place, alter it a little.

@nonnyno

I could never bring myself to read The Curious incident of the Dog in the Night Time because I found the cover illustration so upsetting. It showed a drawing of a German Shepherd with a fork in its side. I owned 2 German Shepherds at the time.

Is that the blue cover? That's not the edition that I read, but I've seen it and just Googled it again and can't see it as a german shepherd. Perhaps that's what you saw because that's what you have. It doesn't really look like any breed, although it does have slightly poodle-y ears and a pom-pom tail.

@RaraRachael

Speaking of children's books, why oh why are so many of them written in twee silly little rhyming verses. I'd far rather read a story to my pupils where I could put my own expression and emphasis on words to make the story fun or interesting for them, rather then contrived nonsense that relies on words chosen because they supposedly rhyme rather than being the best words in the context - FFS "farmers" rhyming with "pyjamas"

The kids couldn't care less if it rhymes. A particular author is guilty of this and I hate reading their books out loud even though I'm seen as a bit of a philistine for not thinking they're marvellous

Is this Julia Donaldson by any chance!!

Now that would be telling

I once read a book with someone who was a contact-lens wearer and it described them as 'the technology in her eyes'. Not a mistake as such, but so over-egged.

I'm a freelance editor/proofreader and come across stuff like characters' names changing, misspellings of names like Muhammad Ali and Mother Teresa etc all the time. A fellow freelancer reckons that the copy-editing stage is being routinely left out these days and books are just being proofread, so publishers get a copy-edit done for proofreading rates. I'm not sure about it but it's not a totally wild theory.

@Rararachael I don't know about all kids - but my ASD son absolutely loved all JDs books and I'm sure it was because of the rhymes as they do give a cadence and structure to the stories which really appealed to him. Aged about 5 he could (and would) recite the Gruffalo from start to finish, just while we were out on walks etc. He loved it!

@Furryslipperboots I do agree about Americanisms! I downloaded the audiobook of a Tale of Two Bad Mice by Beatrix Potter for my kids. Horrified to find it was read in an American accent with the mouse Hunca Munca pronounced Huncha Muncha..... Needless to say I deleted it and provided Amazon with appropriate feedback.......

(Although thinking about it, how do we know she was 'Hunka Munka' - apart from the fact that that was how my Mum pronounced it? But I just do......).

Loads of JD's 'rhymes' don't work well in a Scottish accent, so they drive me particularly nuts.

I do love the cadence of the verse in 'The Snail and the Whale' though; I think it really adds to the sense of being sea-bound and on a journey.

Unrealistic dialogue.

No 15 year old girl character from California talks like she's in Dawson's Creek or a Period Drama. "The love and kindness you have shown to my family, welcoming us into you hearts...."

Ugh.

When they use "shined" It's shone ffs!
The only possible use for shined is if a character visits a traditional shoe shine person, then they had their shoes shined. Otherwise for past tense of shine, it's shone. There are a few similar words that irk me, (cleaved when it should be cloven is one) but shined seems to be in every book lately.
And if the advert says "If you like XXX you'll love this" or "fans of XXX love this" it makes me not want to even read the blurb. Not sure why, just pisses me off