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Original poster

To ask which book characters irrationally annoy you?

547 replies

WaterBird · 12/02/2019 20:24

I'm currently reading the play "The Rise and Fall of Arturo UI" by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht (though it takes place in Chicago). There is a fairly minor character (at least at the point in the play where I'm at) called Young Dogsborough, whose father is a major character in his 80's. Any time the son says anything, it is to unnecessarily agree with the father. For example if the father says, "They've gone", the son will then say "My father says they've gone."
Which book characters have you felt annoyed by?

OP posts:
ReaganSomerset · 13/02/2019 22:59

Yy, some of these characters are supposed to be annoying, such as the ones in The Slap, The Great Gatsby

True, but still.

Also, disagree about Peeves. I thought he was hilarious when I read the books as a child/teenager.

GreatWesternValkyrie · 13/02/2019 23:16

Diana Bishop in A Discovery of Witches. She's too wet to be a witch and Christ, the amount of baths she has

This with bells on, the whole book made me want to scream but particularly that character - all the rescuing and soppiness and fragility and surrendered woman crap. I could rant about it for several paragraphs but FFS 🔥 probably covers it!!!

snoogans · 13/02/2019 23:57

I've just remembered Daisy Armory from the Woman of Substance/Emma Harte saga.
She annoys the shit out of me. She's meant to be the "dove in the nest of vipers" that are Emma Harte's children. (The others are all feckless society knobs). But I fail to see how she's any better. She does fuck all, sending her kids out to work and run the businesses she inherited. But refusing to change anything when her children ask her to (to make their lives easier)

She's a right pain in the arse.

Sharkirasharkira · 14/02/2019 00:37

From GOT (books not show):

Robb - annoying in so many ways, didn't really care when he died!

Cat - also annoying and didn't care when she died, marginally better as a zombie

Probably an unpopular opinion buuuuut....Tyrion! He's a much more likeable character in the show but particularly after the death of Tywin/Shae he turned into a bit of a dick. Yes he was witty, clever and kind at times but he was also a prolific user of prostitutes, selfish, a rapist, a murderer and kind of lost his moral compass. Yes, he had experienced a lot of trauma but he seemed to think that justified him giving up and abandoning being a good person and just doing whatever he wanted. Didn't seem particularly remorseful about any of it either.

From the show:

Arya: I do love her character but by this point in the show she's kind of become an emotionless murder robot who's lost her personality.

Never really saw the appeal of Ginny in HP. Just didn't really get what all the boys saw in her. She wasn't really that extraordinary or interesting, and in the movie she was an outright downer!

Rumboogie · 14/02/2019 00:51

Well that is the thing about Wuthering Heights - all the characters are dreadful and you cannot empathise or identify with any of them and yet it is completely riveting as these people are caught up in a vortex of obsession and jealousy from which they cannot escape. It is the fascination of the awful - certainly not a love story.

Similar applies to the Donna Tartt novel a pp mentioned- awful characters but the circumstances take on a life of their own.

NewYoiker · 14/02/2019 01:01

I'm reading lord of the rings at the moment and Frodo is a nightmare.
However I love the resistable rise of Arturo Ui ! It's a brilliant play. Got me an A at level that play did :)

NewYoiker · 14/02/2019 01:02

@WaterBird I mean I love to read that play but are you reading a book or a play?

captainjackandjill · 14/02/2019 01:22

Has anyone read Ngaio Marsh's mysteries? I love her books (well most of them), but I really can't stand her detective.

Roderick Alleyn is just such a pompous pig. I'll never forget in 'Swing Brother Swing', when one of the women is assaulted by a rotten bloke, he asks her if she liked it! What?!!

Glad to see the love for ValancySmile

Original poster
WaterBird · 14/02/2019 02:21

Well, it's a play in book form so... you could go either way. I'd say it's both.

OP posts:
herecomesthsun · 14/02/2019 03:08

Mr Darcy - too much of a snob to be sexy, however big the house

SchadenfreudePersonified · 14/02/2019 09:42

I used to read Ngaio Marsh when I was in my mid-late teens, but I can't remember any details. I can remember preferring her to Agatha Christie.

Speaking of whom - Tommy and Tuppence- what a pair of &%£$s!

SinisterBumFacedCat · 14/02/2019 10:25

Angel Bastard Clare

Daisypie · 14/02/2019 10:34

Alex Delaware's partner Robin. Spends 20 books fixing guitars and wafting about with beautiful red hair. Has no friends or interests.

HumphreyCobblers · 14/02/2019 11:16

Well that is the thing about Wuthering Heights - all the characters are dreadful and you cannot empathise or identify with any of them and yet it is completely riveting as these people are caught up in a vortex of obsession and jealousy from which they cannot escape. It is the fascination of the awful - certainly not a love story.

I do see that I am supposed to feel this, but I just don't! It annoys me that I don't. I get it much more when I listen to Kate Bush! When I try (about every five years) to read it and like it I just feel nothing but irritation.

EnthusiasmIsDisturbed · 14/02/2019 11:24

I think many read WH when they are a teenager and Heathcliffe comes across to many in our naive minds as being passionate and their love is all consuming and painfully romantic

It’s not at all which I realised the second time reading it

LilaJude · 14/02/2019 11:47

Tris from the Divergent series! (spoilers ahead)

When she kills herself at the end to save her shitty, evil brother because she’s just sooooo noble and self-sacrificing and we’re all supposed to shed a tear at her sacrifice instead of thinking she’s a bloody stupid girl

Nesssie · 14/02/2019 12:06

thecatsthecats Lyra Belacqua from His Dark Materials - 100%!

Love the Hunger Games but Katniss being a wimp and not choosing between Peeta and Gale was annoying

Frodo from LOTR

bookmum08 · 14/02/2019 12:17

Daisypie oh yes Robin. The dog hasn't more personality than she does. Alex himself is a bit weird and creepy. I think it will all turn out to be Alex's imagination. He is actually the nutter who has commited all those crimes he has 'solved' with his imaginary pal Milo. Grin.
Actually I think Milo's sideburns have more personality than Robin.

bookmum08 · 14/02/2019 12:18

The dog HAS more personality I meant to say.

Strixaluco · 14/02/2019 12:29

James fucking Potter - nasty, entitled, self-important, posh bully boy, if he'd been a Slytherin he'd have been expelled.

Famous Five Julian for all the reasons given by PP above.

And agree entirely about the main couple in Gone Girl, both deeply horrible.

AnnaComnena · 14/02/2019 13:00

Amory Ames, main character in an ongoing series of Golden Age style mysteries by Ashley Weaver. Amory is a supposedly intelligent, healthy, very wealthy, young woman, who does absolutely nothing with her life except swan around in expensive clothes and occasionally solve a murder. There have been four or five books now, and I don't recall her ever so much as reading a book or a serious newspaper.

SapphireSeptember · 14/02/2019 13:18

Strixaluco
James fucking Potter - nasty, entitled, self-important, posh bully boy, if he'd been a Slytherin he'd have been expelled.

Yes! Exactly! I think the same about Sirius Black too. Both pure-blood, both from wealthy families, and yet somehow they get a free pass to pick on a poor. neglected (possibly abused) half-blood kid because he's in Slytherin and has weird interests? Oh, but he fights back! How dare he?!

Fuck right off with that mentality, Rowling. I mean, I know you hate Slytherin house but that's your problem, not ours.

No wonder Severus had issues.

(Again, I think about this way too much.)

crosstalk · 14/02/2019 13:19

Dora Spenlow from David Copperfield. IMO the epitome of what Dickens liked in women - lithping, pwetty, young and completely inane. Having said that, Dickens did write strong women but a huge number are psychotic or "funny". More in love with her dog than DC.

LilaJude · 14/02/2019 13:26

poor. neglected (possibly abused) half-blood kid because he's in Slytherin and has weird interests? Oh, but he fights back! How dare he?

‘Weird interests’ is a very gentle way of phrasing ‘was a wizard nazi’.

James Potter and Severus Snape were both bullying little shits who picked on other people when they were teenagers. The difference is that James Potter grew up and fought for a cause he believed in while defending people who couldn’t protect themselves, whereas Snape grew up to join a murderous supremacist group which he only left when it caused him to lose someone personally important to him. Snape then went to viciously bully actual children when he was an adult with a duty of care towards them.

Not saying JP was a brilliant person aged 15, but lots of people are little shits as teenagers before they realise the error of their ways and grow up to be better people.

Strixaluco · 14/02/2019 13:28

Sapphire

Yes, I adore all the HP series but the double standards applied to Gryffindor/Slytherin behaviour by Dumbledore et al never ceases to make my blood boil.